A Safe Haven
by Red Hot Holly Berries
Summary: Tsunade needs Kakashi to provide Konoha with a Hatake kid before his self-destructive tendencies kill him. Naruto needs an Uzumaki heir to pass the Kyūbi to. Unwilling to see his sensei forced into something that would hurt him, Naruto proposes a solution that kills two birds with a stone. It's a ninja's duty to help his Village and his friends. He just hopes neither will get hurt.
1. Chapter One

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the first story I've published in many, many years. Last time I wrote a fic, I didn't have a driving licence yet. I have to thank Naruto for this.

What's to know about this fic of mine:

-It's a slow burn romance. And I mean sloooooow. Don't expect them to do the dirty any time soon.

-It's set two years after the end of the Fourth Shinobi War.

-Kakashi never became Hokage after the end of the Fourth Shinobi War. Tsunade is still in charge, and is currently training Naruto to be Rokudaime Hokage after her.

-There are two kinds of henge: the first, easiest and most common, is only an illusion (though genjutsu specialist can make it feel solid), and the Solid Henge, which actually allows a person to change their body is a thing. Not common, and usually not worth the effort to achieve it, because it's a huge chakra drain.

-In general, The Last never happened, although my fic is set in the same Konoha (for examples, the younger generation has a bad case of hero worship on Naruto just like in the movie)

This fic has been Beta-ed by my lovely friend Giorgia, who is so patient with me and my fic, even if she doesn't actually like Naruto. She's awesome, and checked over by Elena (who hates this pairing but loves me 3 )

Fanart cover: redhothollyberries (put a dot here) tumblr (another dot) com / post / 145751290179

* * *

 **Chapter One**

Six whole years spent at the Academy gave Naruto a near-perfect sixth sense when it came to the school bell. It didn't matter that it had been years since the last time he had heard it as a student: the bell-sense still wouldn't fail him. With a grin, Naruto executed a snake seal and had the inscribed paper on the desk explode right as the school bell rang. The result was a delightful chaos made of smoke, a loud bang, the bell's shrill ringing and the students' excited cries. Naruto's grin widened into a fox smile. Sow chaos at the Academy: check.

The smoke quickly dissipated and Naruto waved at his excited audience. "Very well, class dismissed! Go out and play." The twenty-something children stood up with a loud scraping sound of chairs being moved with little grace and started collecting their things into their backpacks, chatting all the while. Two students, eager to escape the classroom, made a beeline for the door, but Naruto stopped them. "Two things before you all go."

Naruto held up the index finger. He used his right hand, so that the sight of his bandaged hand might reinforce what he was about to say. Not that he really hoped a bunch of kids might appreciate the perks of safety, but it didn't hurt to try. "First, don't blow yourself up. When penning a tag, check three times you draw the seal right before activating it. If it's only the tiniest bit different from the one I drew, trash the paper and restart. Else, your guts will be all over the room, and blood is a pain to clean. Are we clear?" He looked at the class: the eleven-years-old kids all nodded with a chorus of 'yes Naruto-senpai!'. Some looked green at the gross warning, some looked excited. Weird little buggers. He loved them.

He held up a second finger, smiling widely. "Next week you're going to have a test on fuinjutsu. Whoever gets the highest grade will get a personal lesson on sealing by yours truly. Study hard, kids!" All the kids squealed and cheered at the announcement. Knowing the severe case of hero worship the younger generation had on him, Naruto wasn't above using underhand ways to motivate the kids.

Half the students filed out of the classroom, already fighting among themselves on who would get the prize, while the other half crowded around the teacher desk, talking all at the same time. "You're so cool, Naruto-senpai!" "Make something explode!" "Show us more sealing!" A green-haired girl climbed on the desk to get closer. "Teach me, Naruto-senpai!"

Overwhelmed, Naruto laughed and stepped back, his back connecting with the blackboard. Looking at the children surrounding on him on all sides, he felt like a fox cornered by over-excited puppies. "Thank you, but that's enough for today. Why don't you go out and enjoy recess?" The kids pretended not to hear him - or maybe they honestly didn't hear him over the sound of their own chatter - and pressed on, at least until Konoha's Hero was saved by the well-timed arrival of a real Instructor.

"What are all you doing still here? The bell rang five minutes ago. If you dislike recess so much, you can all kiss it goodbye for a week if you're not out of here in ten seconds. Off with you!" Hearing the ring of a threat, and well knowing Iruka was more than able to carry it on, the children promptly ran out of the door, waving Naruto goodbye with loud cries and cheers.

Iruka oversaw the students' exit by the door, arms crossed on his chest and a frown on his face, until the classroom was finally - blessedly - empty. His threatening stance melted away, and he raised an eyebrow at Naruto, a smile on his lips and shoulders shaking in silent laughter. The blonde smiled awkwardly back at him, rubbing the back of his head.

"You know, you shouldn't have said that. Now they will try twice as hard to cheat on the test," Iruka complained.

Naruto laughed out loud. "But Iruka-sensei, I was only trying to motivate them to study! Isn't that a noble goal?"

His ex-sensei shook his head with a sigh, but he was smiling. "A few will throw themselves on the books, but all the others will just double their efforts to cheat." Iruka jerked his head towards the door in a silent invitation. Naruto nodded and hurried to collect his belongings. "Well, if they can pull it off without getting caught by you, they deserve their prize, don't they?" Naruto closed the ink bottles and placed them on a sealing scroll covered in scribbles, alongside with his many brushes and a few spare papers. "They are ninja, cheating is part of the job description." Touching the scroll, Naruto activated the seal with a small burst of chakra and the materials disappeared into the paper with a puff.

Behind him, Iruka snorted something that sounded awfully like 'show-off'. Naruto pocketed the sealing scroll and stuck his tongue out at him, showing all his maturity. Yes, he kept his sealing materials in a sealing scroll. It was both practical and funny, like an inside joke.

"And you know all about cheating, don't you, Naruto?"

Naruto grinned at his old Instructor, absolutely shameless, as they headed out of the classroom and down the hallway. He pretended not to remember all the times Iruka had caught him cheating during tests. "You know, the first task of my chūnin exam was all about cheating. They put us all in a big room and had us answer nine super difficult answers. All they said was that anyone caught cheating would lose points, and who got caught five times would be kicked out. It was a game of cheat, and only the best cheaters could get the answers!"

Iruka this time raised _both_ his eyebrows, the scar running over his nose somehow giving him even more a sceptical expression. "And you passed that test how...?"

Naruto pouted, covering his heart with his right hand as if wounded by his Instructor's lack of faith. "Aw, come on Iruka- sensei!" Iruka's answer was a loud snort. "Okay, so I couldn't answer any of the answers, and passed because of the tenth question, which was a test of our resolve to take the exam. As if I would give up so easily!" Naruto didn't even bother to pretend to be embarrassed at his terrible skills at subterfuge. It was kind of a common joke, how bad the Hero of the Hidden Leaf, one of the strongest shinobi of the Village, sucked at subterfuge. Subterfuge and genjutsu. Give him flashy jutsu any day over that.

His ex-sensei laughed at that, and squeezed Naruto's shoulder - his left one, for Iruka was always considerate enough not to touch his right one - in approval and affection.

They turned a corner and finally got the staff room. Iruka opened the door and let Naruto in, closing it after his ex-student. The Instructors' safe heaven consisted mainly of a small kitchenette, a pantry, a few desks swallowed by towers of papers and a few sofas, over which three other chūnin teachers were lazily slumped. The two women and the man waved at Naruto and greeted him cheerfully, but none got up. They looked like nothing but the Hokage's direct order would make them get up before their free time was up.

"I remember I thought being a student was hard, but now I see the Instructors have got it worse," Naruto joked. Iruka sent an over-exaggerated eyeroll at his colleagues (who happily ignored him) and headed to the balcony overlooking the playground. There the scarred man leaned against the wall and did that teacher multitasking-thing that allowed him to both keep an eye on the children playing below and pay attention to Naruto. "Thank you for coming, Naruto. The kids love having you over," he said with a smile.

Naruto leaned against the railing of the balcony, fully enjoying the sunny spring weather. "It's no problem. I like teaching. It's fun." He wouldn't do it for a living, though. Even if he liked children, the repetitiveness of the job would drive him mad, sooner or later. He always needed new challenges to keep him on his toes and fully concentrated.

"What did you teach them?" Iruka asked him. Naruto hummed and crackled his knuckles absent-mindedly. "The basics. I showed them the Enclosing Technique and the corresponding Unsealing Technique." Naruto grinned at Iruka. "I also showed them the Uzumaki Sealing Technique."

That was just for show, obviously. It would be years, if ever, before any of the students would be proficient enough with seals to apply them with a touch of fingers instead of using paper, ink and brush. "For traps, I showed them the Sealing Tag Barrier and the Smoke Bomb-" Iruka frowned, sending Naruto a dirty look, and the blonde raised his hands in defence, quickly backpedalling. "Only a minor one, I swear! Jeez, even _I_ wouldn't trust an explosive tag in their hands!" He _did_ set off an explosive tag in front of the class, even though he hadn't shown the design of the seal to the students. His ex-sensei didn't need to know that, however.

That sparked another thought, and Naruto tilted his head with a joking smile. "Why, weren't you watching, Iruka-sensei?"

Iruka shook his head. "No, I took the chance to catch up with some of the tons of tests I have to mark. I caught only the last ten minutes or so of the lesson."

"You came to make sure I didn't show your students how awesome pranks are?" Naruto grinned wide. Some of his best pranks had been pulled while at the Academy, and Iruka had taken the brunt of it. The man had been a prankster himself in his youth, though, and had taken it all with grace (most of the times. If 'with grace' you meant that he didn't expel him).

He had expected Iruka to rant against Naruto's past pranks, or maybe even share some stories of his own, but instead the man smiled softly at the blonde. "I came to see you. It's a joy to see you teaching. I'm proud of the man you've become, Naruto."

That had Naruto reeling, startled. He felt the tell-tale feeling of warmth on his cheeks, and he knew he was blushing, both in pride and embarrassment. Despite the status of 'hero' he had gained in the Fourth Shinobi War, Naruto still found himself unused to such heartfelt compliments. He hadn't gotten many in his childhood, and even at nineteen they always left him feeling a bit uneasy, though in a happy way. He never quite knew how to react. Thank the person? Deny it? He often felt he didn't deserve the compliments, but people got sad when he tried to correct them or dismiss their compliments.

The other knew him well, though, and saved him from making an ass of himself by hugging him. When Iruka let him go, beaming, Naruto tentatively smiled back. He felt the need to say something, anything - to thank Iruka, to express how much the man's approval meant to him, but in that moment he couldn't express his feelings any better than Sai.

He didn't need to, though. Iruka let the matter drop by leaning against the railing of the balcony, looking down at the kids. Naruto hesitantly joined him, his elbows on the metal railing and his chin in his palms.

Iruka bumped shoulders with him, winking. Naruto looked at him, questioning, and his old Instructor pointed with a jerk of his head to a trio of particularly loud children, their roughhousing accompanied by lots of delighted war cries. As they watched, a fourth kid with bleach-blond hair joined the fight, diving in with a yell of 'here I come!'. The three kids were bowled over by the child's sudden arrival: any in-fight was instantly forgotten and they allied to bring the pale-haired boy down - and down he went, laughing under the wriggling mass of his three friends' limbs.

Iruka winked at Naruto again before going back to watching over the whole playground, and the blonde chuckled, his shoulders shaking. So what, there were some similarities between himself and the pale-haired boy. If Naruto had any saying in that, that meant the Yamanaka kid was destined to awesomeness (for in a Village full of brown and black-haired ninja, hair that pale a shade of blond was pretty much a dead-giveaway of a Yamanaka).

Naruto looked down at the young boy with a wistful smile, fingers drumming lightly on his cheek. His presence wasn't surprising, for the Yamanaka Clan was one of the most prolific, somehow always managing to have at least one student attending the Academy at all times. Both shinobi and kunoichi from that Clan were expected to have children pretty early.

Yamanaka ninja seemed to find that perfectly natural, as Ino had shown a few weeks before, during Konoha's Eleven bi-monthly Thursday pub night. The discussion had somehow veered off on the subject of children, and Ino had commented wryly that in a year or two they would get all the experience they wanted on toddlers, for she was likely going to have one sooner or later. When a shocked Sakura had questioned her about the seriousness of the relationship with the chūnin she was currently dating, Ino had just brushed it off, saying that it wasn't as if she was going to marry anytime soon. Apparently, marriage and children weren't strictly connected for the Yamanaka.

Ino felt it was her duty towards her Clan to have kids, no matter who the father of the child was. She also wouldn't have to stay out of commission for long, since all off-duty Yamanaka worked in shifts at the family flower shop that doubled as kindergarten for Yamanaka babies whose parents were away on mission. That counted as a win-win situation in her book, or so it seemed. _'Plus, I like children,'_ she had said with a wink.

"I like children," Naruto repeated out loud, his gaze moving from the Yamanaka boy to the other countless children enjoying recess in the playground.

Iruka's words startled him out of his reverie. "Everyone can see that. I wouldn't have let you teach them if you didn't." Naruto let out a non-committal 'hn' at that, not really knowing what to say to that. He opened his mouth, but instead of generic platitude words about teaching, what got out was "Are you planning to have kids, Iruka-sensei?"

Damn, real smooth, Naruto.

He felt like kicking himself whenever his tongue got the better of him. As Sakura said, it was okay to say what you think, but he should _really_ start to actually think before saying it.

Iruka looked at him flabbergasted, eyes wide. After a second he got his voice back and asked back "Where is this coming from, Naruto?"

The blonde rubbed his nose with his left hand, looking away. "I dunno. I was just curious." Liar liar pants on fire. The awkward situation had him blushing again.

Iruka blinked and smiled. "What, now that Konohamaru is all grown up and a genin, you want a new baby brother to play ninja with?" Naruto 'nh-ed' again, a sound that could mean everything and nothing. He was starting to get why Sasuke used that all the time - it was an easy way to deal with people when you didn't know how to interacted with them.

Iruka mercifully avoided to tease him, and actually answered his question. "I don't know, Naruto. Not anytime soon, that's for sure, but I'd love to have children of my own one day." He smiled at the blonde. "It's just too early for me and Shachi to think about kids." This time it was Iruka's time to blush and Naruto's to smile widely. The pretty kunoichi and his ex-sensei had been dating for a year, and the woman had only recently moved in with Iruka. The two were utterly adorable, in the blonde's opinion (or anyone else's, for that matter. They were as cute as kittens together).

"You'd make an awesome dad." Wow, his mouth ran off on its own again. It was getting worse (though it was the honest-to-Kami truth).

Iruka's blush worsened, and it was his turn to look away and rub the back of his head in embarrassment. "I don't know..."

Naruto nodded, overly-eager. "I really mean that." Iruka would be an affectionate father. He could also be stern when the situation required it, though, and would not spoil his kids too much. He would the kind of dad to help his children both with their homework and training, and would play with them tirelessly, knowing that childhood was to be enjoyed - especially in a world where they would be asked to kill people at twelve. He wouldn't place unfair expectations on them, and would take pride in their every little conquest. He would always be there for them - literally. His teaching post meant he would rarely, if ever, get missions that could end up orphaning his kids.

"You would make a great father as well, Naruto."

Naruto's head whipped up so fast he had to blink twice to chase away the dizziness. "W-what?"

Iruka poked him in the shoulder. "I said you would make a good father." He smiled, the scar over his nose stretching as he did. "A really good one."

Naruto swallowed and looked away, suddenly feeling light-headed. He hunched his shoulders forward, his right hand tightening into a fist. His stomach felt like a heavy knot he couldn't swallow, even if he hadn't eaten anything recently.

"Hey, what's wrong?" Iruka laid a hand on his shoulder and leaned in. Naruto didn't look at him, but could head the worry in his voice. "Do you really think so?", he asked instead. Suddenly it was very important.

He half-expected Iruka to lighten the mood with a joke like 'please don't think about having kids before I'm retired or they would drive me bonkers', but the scarred man surprised him by gently squeezing his shoulder and answering "Yes," in a soft but firm voice.

Naruto peered at the other out of the corner of his eye. His almost-father, his almost-brother, smiled at him and repeated "Yes, I do." Iruka didn't ask why, or voiced any worries. He seemed to trust him with this.

If Iruka trusted him, then Naruto could do it.

The blonde straightened, raising his head high as he crossed his arms on the metal railing. Right below the balcony, a big group of girls had ganged up and robbed the boys of the ball and were now playing kick-the-ball-and-keep-it-away-from-the-boys. Naruto was glad to see that, at first glance, there was no lone kid in the playground being blatantly ostracized.

His child wouldn't be left alone like he had been. His child would be like the Yamanaka boy. With real friends to play with, and happy.

Being a jinchūriki meant that he had to have a contingency plan to transfer Kurama to someone, if need arose. The Kyūbi wasn't ready to be released upon the world - or maybe the world wasn't ready for the Nine-tailed fox to be released upon it, he thought with an inner chuckle. (Somewhere deep into his mind, Kurama growl-snorted.)

In short, Naruto needed an Uzumaki heir.

The school bell rang, waking him from his reverie. Disappointed, the students in the courtyard burst into choruses of 'awww' and 'nooo', but they all obediently went back inside. Beside Naruto, Iruka stretched, his hands up above his head, and headed inside as well. The blonde followed him.

The Instructor waved him goodbye just outside the staff room. "It's been a pleasure, Naruto, thank you for coming. See you!" Naruto beamed at him and returned the wave. "See you!"

Iruka went down the hallway, heading to his classroom, while Naruto descended the stairs and left the Academy. A quick glance at the clock hung on the facade of the Academy showed him he still had plenty of time before his shift at the Mission Assignment Desk.

Training sounded appealing. Little good came when he thought too hard about things. He needed to vent out, and what was better than some training to tire the body and lighten the mind?

With a nod to himself, Naruto jumped on the roof of the closest building, and headed off to the training grounds.


	2. Chapter Two

Hello there, people! Glad to see you again so soon! I rarely wrote so much and so quickly. Let's hope I can keep this up!

Thanks again to my beta-reader Giorgia! 3

Review corner:

To Klynnin: Believe me, you won't regret clicking! I'll do my best to be up to your likes.

To berry5tz: Here kakashi makes his first entrance, even though only my mention. But it's a pretty big mention! Talking about Iruka, I'm glad we have the same opinion. He's a good man, he really deserves someone to love!

Suggestion Corner: Every chapter I'll suggest a Naruto fanfic I personally found awesome. This time we have "First Try" by Luciella. It has two very interesting parallel sequels: "First Try: Team 7" and "First Try: Team Tetsuo". Go and read it!

* * *

 **Chapter Two**

Tsunade grunted in a very un-ladylike fashion, frustration obvious on her face. The throbbing vein on her forehead didn't bode well. "Naruto, the Academy _did_ send in the results of the genin exam, right?"

Naruto, sitting at the desk on the left of the Hokage's, inched away from the woman as much as he could without actually moving his chair. "Yes, baa-chan." He _really_ did not want to be at the end of Tsunade's short temper.

The blond Senju looked at her attendant dead in the eye, and Naruto froze like a rabbit in front of a fox. "Then _where_ are they, Naruto?" Her saccharine sweet voice was the scariest thing _ever_.

Naruto swallowed, his eyes scanning the room in panic. Tsunade's desk was almost bare, so that couldn't be it. His own desk was pretty cluttered, but as he had caused the clutter himself in the past half an hour, he knew that no Academy paper was hidden amongst the documents and reports concerning their trade agreement with Suna.

Desperate, Naruto looked at the cabinets lined against the wall facing him - but no, the papers had arrived that morning, and he was _sure_ he had not opened those cabinets for at least a few days. He twisted on his chair and looked behind him - and bingo, the line of cabinets behind his desk was covered in tall, gravity-defying piles of paperwork. "Just a moment!" He stood up and flipped quickly through the ten-inch-high piles of paper sheets and folders. Hospital budget, project for the new canteen, personal missive from the Raikage - the more papers he leafed through, the harder he could _feel_ Tsunade staring at his back. Thank Kami the Senju didn't have any weird kekkai genkai that allowed them to set people on fire with their thought.

More papers. Suggestions for jōnin promotion, proposals for the next chūnin exams - there, Academy results!

With a sigh of relief, Naruto picked the thin violet folder and handed it to Tsunade, who accepted it with a raised eyebrow, looking very unimpressed with his filing skills. Naruto smiled awkwardly in apology, rubbing the back of his nape. Tsunade sighed and gave up, obviously considering him a lost case.

The Hokage opened the folder and started reading, humming softly. Naruto sat back in his chair, but peered curiously at the report. New genin meant new teams, and that was always interesting. "How many passed?," he dared to ask. Reading about Konoha's future ninja must have eased her mood, for she answered without beating about the bush: "Forty."

Naruto gave a low whistle. Sure, almost two thirds of them would likely fail their jōnin-sensei's test, but still - that was _a lot_. "That makes thirteen temporary teams and one spare. If they go the usual way, that could mean between three to five new complete teams. Not bad." Tsunade nodded, leafing through the students' single reports. "Not bad at all. We need all manpower we can get our hands on," she agreed.

"Yeah. Still, I've never seen so many genin graduate." Naruto's own graduating year had been only of twenty-seven kids.

Again, Tsunade agreed with him off-handedly, still reading the reports. "Twelve years ago must have been a good year for babies. I wonder what happened to make it so?" Surprised by the comment, Naruto thought about it. Twelve years ago he had been seven, attending his second year of the Academy. Try as he might, he couldn't remember much of what was happening in the Village around that time. Before he could think too much into it (and likely hurt his brain), Tsunade dismissed her own comment: "No matter. What I'm really looking forward to is the graduating class in ten years or so." Was that glee in her voice?

Naruto tilted his head sideways, blinking at the Hokage. "What?," he asked intelligently.

Tsunade looked at him for a long moment, and Naruto felt quite uneasy. It was the how-can-you-not-know look. He wished he could say he got it only from his baa-chan, but truth was pretty much all the people close to the blonde jinchūriki had eventually developed that very same stare when it came to him. It was Konoha-patented, by now.

Still, Tsunade proved once again to be his favoritest person by explaining what she meant - she made him feel stupid sometimes, but she always explained. "You must have noticed how many maternity leave requests we've had in the past year," the woman said, and Naruto nodded: that was true. Naruto didn't keep count, but he could kind of remember most of the kunoichi (and the few odd shinobi) who asked for parental leave - when after a few months he saw them again at the Mission Assignment Desk, he always made sure to ask how their children were doing.

"Well, you'll be surprised to know that that's not the norm. In normal times, there are only about two thirds of the births you've been seeing." Naruto blinked owlishly at that statement. "There are? Why?"

Tsunade half-smirked, entwining her fingers and propping her chin upon them, Academy reports forgotten. "The war. It's common enough to have a small baby boom on the winning side in the times immediately following the end of a war - and I'm not talking about the results of the 'oh thank Kami we're alive let's enjoy surviving' festivities." She waved a hand at that, as if distancing herself from such a foolishness. "Well, some of the children surely are conceived that way, but most are born to people who were forcibly reminded of their mortality by the war and felt the need to leave some kind of legacy behind."

Naruto interrupted her, raising his hand to shoulder level, as if he were still in Academy. "How is that any different from an A-rank mission or something?" He and his friends had brushed Death time and time again out there, on a mission or another.

Tsunade nodded, taking his question into account. "The difference is that the end of a war leaves you the tiniest little bit more optimistic about the future. Your city may be in ruins, and some of your friends may be dead, but you and your loved one made through it, and you _won_. Maybe it's Kami's way of telling you it's okay to be happy and have a family?" She raised an eyebrow for added effect. "Somehow, it works. This effect lasts about one year and a half, so my prediction is that we'll see a slight decline in births in the next six months or so." She shrugged and corrected herself: "Well, more than a 'decline', we'll just be back to normality."

Naruto nodded, thoughtful. Tsunade had made him her attendant only after the war, so it wasn't as if he knew what the Village was like in normal peacetime. He would enjoy learning, though.

Tsunade's lecture wasn't finished, however, and after a moment of pause, she went on. "In regular times, ninja don't have children often - or at least a part of them doesn't. Can you tell me why, Naruto?"

The blonde perked up at the question, lightly drumming his fingers on his cheek, chin propped up on his other palm. Tsunade rarely taught him any lesson straight-away, she much preferred to discuss with him until he got to the solution on his own. Also, she honestly seemed to enjoy their debates - sometimes Naruto even came up with solutions the Godaime Hokage honestly hadn't thought of.

"Ninja unaffiliated with any Clans have less children than those belonging to a Clan," Naruto answered, thinking back about the thoughts he'd had at the Academy a few days before. "Unaffiliated ninja don't have a big family to fall back to, and the fear of orphaning their kids holds them back from becoming parents, especially those who are orphans themselves and know what it's like. Clan ninja, on the other hand, generally have big families and know for sure that someone will care for their child if anything happens to them. Also, in a Clan, retired and off-duty relatives take care of all the young, leaving the parent free to take missions without worrying about who they left the kid with."

Tsunade smiled at him. "Very good, Naruto, very good." Naruto straightened his posture, proud of himself. His baa-chan didn't hand out praises lightly.

"Unplanned pregnancies aside, another reason ninja have few children is that many have problems forming a relationship stable enough that they may consider marrying and having children." Tsunade halted for a second, giving Naruto the chance to interrupt, but the blonde didn't. Nodding to herself, Tsunade went on: "Those who have, for example, lost teammates or loved ones in traumatic ways may develop trust issues and fear tying themselves to someone. 'What good comes from getting close to someone, if they are going to leave me or die sooner or later?'" Nothing in her bearing gave away that she may be speaking out of personal experience, except from a small hitch in her voice. Naruto kept silent, respecting her loss. He knew of the pain that drove her away from Konoha.

"Unfortunately, there are many other... Issues that can keep ninja from having children. Some of them accept the help of psych medic-nin and can eventually get over their traumas, and one day can form a family and be happy. Some... Don't." Tsunade grimaced, tightening her left hand into a fist, as if her ninja's pain hurt _her_. Naruto wondered how could anyone even _think_ she didn't care about her people. They were grossly mistaken.

"And now, Naruto, comes the hard part of being Hokage." Tsunade's face was serious, and Naruto felt the hair on the back of his head stand up. "What's more important, a ninja or Konoha?"

"The ninja _are_ Konoha," Naruto answered without missing a beat, conviction in his voice, not leaving it up for discussion. The Godaime Hokage chuckled, losing a bit of her stern bearing. "Good answer. All ninja together make Konoha - we're getting to that. But if you had to choose between one ninja's well-being and Konoha on the whole, which one would you choose?"

Naruto was silent for a long moment, thinking. He wasn't a stranger to the concept of sacrificing oneself for the sake of the Village - but that usually meant _him_ (Sakura always said he had some kind of hero complex - or martyr's complex, depending on the situation). It just didn't feel right to ask someone to do something he wouldn't be ready to do himself. But he wasn't so naive to think he _wouldn't_ be forced to make hard decisions as Hokage.

His father was an example of an Hokage taking a difficult decision, at the cost of his family.

"I don't know," he answered eventually, frustrated with himself. It didn't feel like the right answer. The Village's sake should always come first, but he loved its inhabitants too much to just... Sacrifice them like chess pawns.

Tsunade nodded. She looked as if she knew perfectly well what her question would do to him. "Think about this: in order to be a good home for its ninja, the Village needs to be strong. Right?"

Naruto nodded, mollified.

"And in order to be strong, the Village needs to have strong Hokage, sure... But above all, many strong ninja. Right?"

Naruto nodded again.

"So... What would you do, if your ninja refused to have enough children to keep the Village strong?"

Naruto was about to nod again, but instead froze.

Tsunade carried on, answering her own question: "You try to help them overcome their problems. You start many kindergartens, you help them financially, you create a valid foster system, you offer psychological help. You let them sort themselves out... Until it's not enough anymore." She sighed, her chin once again on her entwined fingers. "Lifelong chūnin are generally left alone. But jōnin? Strong jōnin, even more? I cannot allow them not to have children. Konoha _needs_ their children, their strength."

Naruto jumped up, slamming his hands on his deck, and shouted "But you can't-!", only for Tsunade to do the same - with the difference that her desk creaked ominously, and that the floor quacked the tiniest bit under their feet. "Sit down, brat!"

After a long moment Naruto obeyed, crossing his arms and glaring at the Hokage in silent insubordination. Satisfied, Tsunade sat down as well. "As I was saying, Konoha needs its best jōnin to have children, in order for the next generation to be as strong as the previous one and keep the peace. Clans do half the work, prodding their own ninja to do their duty, dealing with any recalcitrance behind closed doors. Since kekkai genkai are always kept in a Clan's bloodline..."

"...You leave protecting the bloodlines that carry kekkai genkai to the Clans themselves. In order to keep their Clan strong on the political chessboard, they make sure to keep their numbers high," Naruto concluded, speaking slowly, analyzing the piece of news. It made sense. Clans singularly maybe didn't care for the sake of the Village on the whole - but all together, they worked for its sake, while keeping each other in check.

Now for the other shoe to drop... "And what about strong ninja with no Clan to persuade them?" He thought about Sasuke, and amended: "Or ninja who don't have a Clan anymore?" As much as Naruto thought the Sharingan was more trouble that it was worth, he could easily still see how it would fit into this.

Tsunade sent him a smirk, correctly guessing who he was thinking about. "In order to be restored as a Leaf ninja, your Uchiha friend had to sign a contract promising the Village at least five children, to be had with a woman approved of by the Hokage. The first of which he has to conceive before his twenty-second birthday, by the way."

Naruto gaped. "What!?" The bastard had told him nothing of this! Naruto was his _friend_ , how could he not tell him!

Tsunade waved his objections away. "Restoring the Uchiha Clan is one of his goals, so it's not as if I'm making him a disservice. I'm just... Forcing his hand a bit, to remind him who's in control here." She frowned. "Actually, his case is pretty easy, since he does want children, sooner or later." She sighed. "The real problems arise with the non-Clan ninja who _don't_."

Naruto nodded apathetically, still reeling from the sudden overload of information. ( _Sasuke had told him nothing!_ )

Tsunade noticed he wasn't paying attention and barked a "What would _you_ do, Naruto?" that shook him from his shock. "Eh?"

Tsunade looked very close to facepalming. Instead, she took a deep breath, then glared at him with all the strength of her honey-coloured eyes, making him cringe. "What would you do with an unaffiliated jōnin who doesn't want to have children?"

Naruto shook his head to clear it, and concentrated on the matter on hand. It made him feel a bit ill to speak of his fellow ninja as if they were breeding stock. "I... I would... Talk to them? I would make them understand how important it is for Konoha. I would appeal to their sense of duty. I would promise to help with raising the children."

Tsunade's glare faded and once again she was looking at him in approval. "Very good." She sighed, leaning back against her chair, hands interwoven on her generous chest. "That is exactly what I do. I call them over and talk to them. I try to make them see reason. I ask them to get over whatever their issues may be, at least for the time necessary to produce a child - yes, I _know_ that sounds callous, but I don't have a choice," the Hokage defended herself from Naruto accusing stare.

"Sometimes, just asking is not enough, and I have to issue a direct order. An S-rank mission, given the delicate matter. They're soldiers, thinking of it in terms of 'mission' often helps them get through it." She smiled grimly. "Despite what people think, I don't like to see my ninja suffer. If I can spare them any pain, I do. That's where the wonders of medicine come to the rescue. Do you know how, Naruto?"

The blond Uzumaki shook his head.

"If the ninja has issues so strong they can't bear to find someone of their choosing and have sex the regular way, I offer the choice of artificial insemination. If it's a shinobi, I'll ask him to provide a sample of sperm a medic will use to fertilize a volunteer kunoichi. Same thing if it's a kunoichi, with the option that if she can't raise the child, it can be given to a foster family," she explained. "This way, the ninja doesn't even have to get to know the other parent. If it's necessary in order to develop some particular ability, they will be asked to train the child when it's time, but aside from that they're not _forced_ to interact with their child in any way. It's a choice left up to them."

Naruto blinked slowly. "I... I didn't know this was a thing." It did make sense when one thought in terms of doing one's duty to Konoha, but still. Breeding stock. Weren't ninja any better than prize racehorses?

He thought about his own vague ideas of having a child himself. Wasn't he thinking of doing the very same thing, planning to ask some faceless kunoichi to bear him a child? In his mind, he would raise the child on his own, but what would the mother have to say to that? All in the name of the Village needing his precious Uzumaki genes - and the Kyūbi.

Tsunade grimaced, shrugging. "It has to 'be a thing', for Konoha's sake." She probably didn't like it any better than he did. "That's what I'm going to propose Kakashi, at least. The man is completely asexual, and full of issues to booth. I'm never getting an Hatake kid out of him the regular way."

The blond Uzumaki started, knocking over a three-inch-high pile of papers off his desk with his elbow. "Kakashi-sensei!?" he cried, not caring one lick about the papers scattering on the floor.

The blond Senju snorted. "Yes, Kakashi. Don't be so surprised, brat. At the rate he's going, he's not going to live to see thirty-five." She gave him a _look_ , as if it were his fault. "He's overworking himself, and sooner or later even Sharingan-no-longer Kakashi is going to make one mistake too many."

"Wait, he's thirty?" Naruto blurted out. He'd thought him to be at least forty!

Tsunade levelled him with a scorching glare for interrupting her. "He's thirty-three." Only fourteen years older than him? He'd thought him older. Must be the silver hair. Or his old-man attitude. Yeah, probably that.

"Anyway, the longer we wait, the less the chance to have a Hatake baby. The Hatake Clan was never as big as the Nara or Inuzuka, but they had never dwindled down to just one man. I'm not hoping to restore it completely like with the Uchiha, but I can't allow that Clan to completely disappear."

Naruto nodded, trying to wrap his mind around the gross concepts of 'Kakashi-sensei' and 'sex' in the same sentence. The two things simply didn't mix. He really couldn't imagine the man in any kind of sexual situation - he could see where the 'asexual' comment came from.

Tsunade drummed her perfectly-manicured fingernails on the edge of the desk. "I'm still looking at possible matches. Some are kunoichi who volunteer - even though they don't know who they're going to be paired with, obviously - others are kunoichi I personally hand-pick."

She sighed, disappointed. "I wish we had that Uzumaki teammate of Sasuke. Karin, was it? She would be perfect to pair with Kakashi. A child from those bloodlines would be a real powerhouse." She snorted, rolling her eyes. "But fat chance I'm giving Oto the chance to have an Uzumaki-Hatake when I _don't_."

Naruto's eyebrows threatened to secede and join his hairline for good. " _Why_ would you want Kakashi-sensei to..." 'Interbreed' sounded so _bad_. "...Intermarry with _my_ family?" Tsunade's off-hand comment had come so out of the blue it went right past 'confusion' territory and right into 'what the fuck' territory.

Tsunade peered at her attendant with a slight smirk. "What do you know about the Hatake's kekkai genkai?"

Yup, 'what the fuck' it is. "Is that a joke?" In the seven years he'd known his sensei, not _once_ he had seen anything resembling a kekkai genkai - and they had fought side-by-side _a lot_ , he would have damn _noticed_. It wasn't as if kekkai genkai were inconspicuous.

(His Sharingan didn't count. That had been Obito's kekkai genkai, not his own.)

The blond Senju rubbed her temples as if to ward off an incoming headache. Hey, if someone had the right to get a headache, that was Naruto, not Tsunade! He was the one having this piled on him all at once! "Ok, note to self: next time we're _so_ having a complete lesson on all Konoha's bloodlines and their kekkai genkai."

Naruto settled down more comfortably, sensing an incoming lecture. "Long story short, your views on kekkai genkai have been spoiled by the Sharingan and the Byakugan. Most of the times, I'll have you known, a kekkai genkai doesn't show itself physically. Which, if you think about it, is a damn good way to protect its own existence from the hands of the enemy. Think about the Yamanaka's mental control, the Nara's shadow techniques, or the Akamichi's body manipulation: even if less showy than the Uchiha's and Hyuga's, those techniques are tied to their bloodline, making it a kekkai genkai."

A thought came to Naruto, and his eyes widened in excitement. "Do Uzumaki's huge chakra reserves count as a kekkai genkai?" _That_ would be awesome. He would so love to rub his own personal kekkai genkai in Sasuke's face next time he saw him. See how Mr. I'm-more-special-than-you took that.

Tsunade shrugged, making an apologetic gesture with her hands. "I'm not really sure, I haven't known enough Uzumaki to say that. Even if Konoha and Uzushio were allies, Villages never share much information about their bloodlines, so I can't really tell." Sensing his disappointment, she added "If you really want to know more, you'll have to go to Uzushio yourself and dig out any surviving records about your family, if the archive is still standing."

Inwardly, Naruto promised himself exactly that. Next time he had a mission in the Land of Waves, he was so going to stop by Uzushio's ruins.

"Anyway, Uzumaki's chakra reserves are exactly what I would love to see coupled with the Hatake's kekkai genkai - which is called 'white chakra', by the way," Tsunade went on. "Even though Hatake have only average chakra reserves, their chakra is five times denser than regular chakra. It's especially devastating when channelled through a blade, or through the limbs in a taijutsu fight. Have you ever seen Kakashi fight with a blade?"

Naruto nodded.

"Then you must have noticed the white glow the blade gave off, and the white slash attacks he used?"

Naruto nodded.

"Have you ever seen anyone else do something like that?"

Naruto shook his head.

"Then why in the Shodai's name did you never wonder about it?"

Naruto shrugged. "It's Kakashi-sensei..." Nobody questioned Kakashi-sensei. You just took everything at face value.

Tsunade opened his mouth as if two berate him for his idiocy - then stopped, sighed and carried on: "That was him using his white chakra. Those attacks gained his father Sakumo the nickname of 'White Fang' during the Second Shinobi War. It may not be as flashy as the Sharingan, but it _does_ have its uses. White chakra always comes with a very, very good chakra control. Imagine Uzumaki chakra stores, but made of denser, more powerful white chakra instead of the normal kind - coupled with almost perfect control. That would be unstoppable. Maybe we could even recreate Kushina's chakra chains technique!"

The mention of chakra chains had Naruto wincing. He _had_ tried to replicate his mother's jutsu, but there were no written instructions _anywhere_ , and he had gotten exactly nowhere with his utter lack of fine chakra control. The combination of bloodlines Tsunade spoke of _did_ sound promising.

Eventually, the Godaime shrugged, losing the passionate spark that had animated her amber eyes. "Genetic is a bit of a hobby of mine," she almost apologised. "This isn't the only impossible match I thought about. I like to think of how I would have matched extinct bloodlines, even if those matches are not actually doable anymore."

Naruto just nodded, lost in his thoughts. His mind went back to Kakashi-sensei's issue. "So... What kind of deal would you offer Kakashi-sensei?" he asked, hesitantly. He had to know - it was Kakashi-sensei they were talking about, one of his precious people.

Tsunade hummed, making abroad gesture with her hands. "Both psych evaluations and his friends agree that he's completely asexual. If I asked him to find a woman to have sex with, he would just freak out - and it's not like I'm going to _force_ him." Although she didn't actually use the word 'rape', it hung in the air between them.

Naruto grimaced in disgust at the thought. No one deserved that, Village's sake or not. "So... Artificial insemination it is, for him?"

The Godaime nodded. "Basically, I'd just ask him to finally put Icha Icha to good use and send him off to the toilet with his book and a phial." She half-chuckled, amused, and Naruto found himself doing the same. He could kind of picture the man's flabbergasted face. "The child would live with the mother, obviously. As much as I admire Kakashi as a shinobi, he's really not parent material."

Out of reflex, Naruto opened his mouth to defend his sensei, but nothing came out. He would have loved nothing more than proving her wrong, but she _was_ right. The man didn't deal well with responsibilities. Don't get him wrong, in a team Kakashi-sensei was the best thing ever, never leaving a teammate behind... But having to _care_ for someone defenceless? For a child? No. Just... No.

(Naruto refused to think how Kakashi-sensei had done jack shit for _him_ when he had been a kid. He was so not opening that can of worms now.)

"We will also need for the kid to be trained in the Hatake style. Since I can't be sure Kakashi is going to be still around in ten years, I'm also ordering him to write down everything about his clan, from learning to master white chakra to taijutsu's katas or any family ninjutsu, so that the kid can be taught by whatever teacher he or she will have." Naruto nodded, agreeing with Tsunade's reasoning, though hearing her talk so dismissively about the death of his sensei left a bad taste in his mouth. He could understand where she came from, though. An active ninja's life expectancy wasn't very high.

Both were silent for a long moment. Naruto fiddled with the bandages covering his right hand, tugging any loose ends back in place as his mind examined the problem at hand. He needed to start thinking like a Hokage, he couldn't hope there would always be people taking difficult decisions for him. Eventually, Naruto looked up and asked: "Which kunoichi are you considering for him?"

Tsunade tapped her cheek lightly. "My favourite pick would be Yuhi Kurenai."

Naruto blinked, and she explained her reasoning: "Her great genjutsu talent coupled with white chakra would make a very good asset. Plus, she's a friend of Kakashi and I'm hoping that it would make the situation more bearable for him." The blond Uzumaki nodded slowly at that. In that light, it _did_ make sense. He didn't know the jōnin from the ex-Team Eight's very well, but he did know she was a friend of Kakashi-sensei.

"Her daughter Mirai is two years old and not a toddler anymore, and that would make her eligible, but..." The Godaime sighed. "To say the truth, I'm not all that hopeful she's going to accept. From what I gather, she's still very much in love with Asuna and I fear she would think having another man's child would defile his memory. And if she says no, I'm not going to force her, not when there are many other kunoichi volunteering."

Naruto pulled a face. "But no other kunoichi is Kakashi-sensei's friend."

Tsunade agreed with him. "No, they aren't. But he wouldn't be the first to give a child to a stranger. The kunoichi being his friend would have been a great plus, but it's not _necessary_ per se."

Naruto silently disagreed, glaring at his desk. Kakashi-sensei didn't deal well with obligations. He knew his sensei, and knew his relationship skills. Even skipping the sexual act, the thought of being forced to interact with an almost total stranger in order to see his child would freak Kakashi-sensei out - like, very bad. He really had problems interacting with people, way worse than even Sasuke. In comparison, Sai was a social butterfly.

When he looked up, Naruto discovered Tsunade was looking at him intensely, her head tilted sideways. "What?" he asked, defensive. "You don't agree," she said, and he shook his head. "No." He really didn't.

Tsunade nodded at that, chin propped in her palm. "I understand. But listen to me, Naruto. What I'm hoping to do here is to give Konoha a Hatake, but also to help Kakashi himself."

Naruto perked up, and she went on: "I'm hoping that the thought of having a child will give Kakashi something to look forward to, and maybe put a stop to his self-destructive tendencies. Both as myself and as Hokage, I don't want to see him dead. Even though he doesn't seem to realize it, the Village needs him, just like his friends need him." She shot Naruto a pointed look. "It may sound bad, but he's so full of complexes that we don't even know for sure if having a friendly face would actually help him. What matters is the result."

Once again, Naruto disagreed. Tsunade might have known Kakashi-sensei ever since he was a kid, but she hadn't fought alongside with him for the last seven years like Naruto had, she hadn't spent with him all the time Naruto had. Maybe it was arrogant of him to presume to know the inner workings of a man fourteen years his senior, but Naruto had the strong fear that Kakashi-sensei would never be able to relate to his child if every time he looked at the kid he saw the face of a stranger. The man was so wary of strangers he would never allow himself to get close to the kid, in _any_ way. So the 'therapeutic' part of having a child went out of the window.

As his mouth was wont to do, it spoke before the thought in Naruto's mind was even fully formed.

"I could do it."

In the utter silence that followed those words, Naruto crossed his arms. Even if his mouth had run off, he wouldn't took it back.

Tsunade looked at him blinking, for once looking honestly surprised. "What?"

"I could have that child myself," Naruto elaborated. His defiant stance soon crumbled under the Godaime's heavy gaze though, and he hunched his shoulders forward, wincing and winding his hands in his lap. He didn't look away, though.

Tsunade sighed, for a moment looking all her almost sixty years despite her youth jutsu. "Okay, I'll bite. How would you, a boy, go about having another man's child?"

Naruto flinched at hearing it said out loud like that. Embarrassed, he rubbed the back of his nape. _Awkward_. "My... My henge is not truly a genjutsu. Not always, at least. If I henge into a chair, it's just an illusion making me look like a chair, but... If I henge into a person, it's not an illusion. It's solid. Like a ninjutsu. I can actually turn into that person."

Tsunade's eyes were wide in surprise, and Naruto knew why. Solid henge wasn't common, for only the greatest genjutsu specialists could accomplish it after _years_ of hard work. Since he was total crap at genjutsu, she knew that wasn't how he had achieved it. The word 'shapeshifter' hung unsaid between them - kitsune were renown shapeshifters.

Refusing to speak about that, Naruto did what he was best at - diverting the attention. He stood up and executed a flawless chain of seals - dog, bear, ram - mentally picturing Kakashi-sensei in the tiniest detail.

A puff of smoke, and he _was_ Kakashi-sensei. He was taller, though his shoulders weren't as broad. Naruto shrugged, loosening his shoulders. It felt weird to feel so _lean_. Kakashi-sensei has less muscle mass he did - his arms almost felt too light.

A humming sound brought his attention back to Tsunade, whose eyes were roaming all over his body, a hand covering her mouth in thought. "Good henge. It sure looks solid." She smirked. "Take off that mask, let us see that pretty Hatake face."

Naruto chuckled and obeyed, hooking a finger under the hem of the mask and revealing a fairly plain face.

Tsunade nodded, not losing her smirk. If anything, it got wider. "Almost good enough, but it's not perfect."

Naruto blinked, surprised. "What? You've seen his face?" Damn, didn't that sound strange, hearing Kakashi-sensei's low timbre instead of his own voice?

"Kid, that man has been in the hospital more times you've eaten ramen. I sneaked a peek a few times when he was out."

"Damn, I only got a few glimpses! Not fair." There, he also got the jōnin's plaintive tone down to pat.

Tsunade raised an eyebrow. "This doesn't speak well for your so-called perfect solid henge."

Naruto pouted: "Not fair, I can't replicate what I don't know perfectly! This is the best I could do with the few glimpses I caught over the years."

"Kakashi-sensei probably wasn't the best example," he admitted, walking up to her and holding out his left hand for her to take. "But here, this is real." The Godaime took his hand in hers and examined it, turning it, pinching the skin, touching the knuckles. To show her the difference, Naruto one-handed dispelled the henge with his other hand - the tanned hand Tsunade now cradled was very different from Kakashi-sensei's: larger, with shorter, thicker fingers and broader knuckles.

The blond Senju let him go and reclined against the back of her chair, a thoughtful look on her face. "That could just be a very good genjutsu able to fool all five senses."

Naruto in all answer snickered, going back to his chair. Him, good with genjutsu? Was that a joke?

Tsunade let the matter drop with a chuckle as well. "What has your henge to do with our discussion, though?," she asked, and Naruto performed a henge again, this time into his favourite female form. His jaw was just a bit slimmer, his face narrower and tad more oval, his hair longer and tied in two ponytails, but his eyes and whisker marks were the same. He tried to change as little as possible on the outside, so even if he now had generous breasts, narrower waist and wider hips, his stature stayed the same, just like he roughly maintained his muscle mass and weight.

Tsunade whistled. "That's your new Sexy jutsu?"

Naruto nodded, crossing his arms under his breast. "While I was travelling with Ero-sennin I realized I could keep this going pretty much forever. It drains no more than a fourth of my chakra." His voice was only half a tone higher - he hated startling himself whenever he forgot he was wearing an henge and spoke with someone else's voice.

Now, for the real explanation. This was going to be hard. And awkward - already he could feel a blush coming up. "He was intrigued, and urged me to try and keep it going on to experiment." He shrugged. "I'll never be an infiltration specialist, but I learnt to pull off a pretty decent woman. I did... Lots of... Experiments with this form." The memories of what Ero-sennin had pushed him into rose unbidden. Why, hello there, Blush of Doom.

Tsunade frowned, comprehension dawning on her. "Does that include having sex? Did he pimp you out?," she asked, incredulous.

The human body is physically unable of embarrassment, but Naruto gave it a good try, blushing so hard his ears felt on fire. "No no no! I mean, yes, I had sex, but he didn't pimp me out, honest!" He floundered, hands waving in near-panic. "I was curious myself, okay?" He took a deep breath and tried to go back on track, going to the heart of the matter. "Anyway, we discovered that my henge really makes me into a woman. I stayed into my female form for a month, and I eventually got a period." Naruto tentatively smiled at Tsunade, trying to convey the sheer awkwardness of that experience, hoping to get some sympathy. "It was the grossest thing ever, I freaked out and scared the crap out of Jiraiya."

Tsunade looked speechless. The Godaime looked very un-Hokage-like gaping like that. "You... You..." She coughed and recomposed herself. "You're telling me that you have a fully functioning female reproductive system?"

Naruto nodded, his pigtails swishing near his ears. In order to achieve a complete transformation, he'd had to study female anatomy, complete with all the inner bits.

"Can you get pregnant?"

Naruto shrugged. "Well, I'm not _sure_ , but Ero-sennin thought it was likely. I mean, it _would_ make sense."

Tsunade visibly steeled herself. "So, let me get this straight. You stayed female for a month and got a period, so you think you can get pregnant."

Naruto nodded.

"Did you experience that again?"

Naruto shook his head. "Nope. I didn't want to repeat _that_ and so I always paid attention not to stay in female form too long to avoid it."

"So now you're offering to use this version of your Sexy jutsu to get pregnant with Kakashi's child."

Naruto winced at the wording, but held strong and nodded.

"Naruto, you _do_ realize what you're offering yourself for, right? You were grossed out by a period." Tsunade laid her hands palm-down on the desk, leaning forward. "Here were are talking of getting through a _whole_ nine-months of pregnancy - not talking about the aftermath. Why would you put yourself through this? It's madness."

Naruto crossed his legs, his slimmer-than-usual fingers lightly drumming on the ankle propped on his knee, his dangling foot moving in sync. Where to start unravelling _that_? Only an hour before his half-made plans for a child had been exactly that, _half-made_! "I've been thinking." Tsunade snorted at that, amused, and Naruto shot her a dark look. "I've been thinking," he repeated with more force, "about what would happen to Kurama if something happened to _me_."

There, that got Tsunade's attention. "Go on," she told him with a wave of her hand.

"If I died, Kurama would either get out - if the seal were damaged enough to let him escape - or would 'die' with me and reform somewhere else in a few years. You know, 'chakra construct' not being really mortal and all that." Naruto made to rake a hand through his short hair - then discovered his hair was still tied and changed the move to caress one of his pigtails. "What we worry about is what would happen to him if either of those situations happened. He's not the furry ball of hate he used to be, but he can't be sure the trauma won't revert him to his... Original state." Meaning, they had as many chances to have a pretty reasonable Kurama on their hands... As well as a raging Kyūbi. Whether it happened on whatever battlefield Naruto had died or half a world away, decades down the line, wasn't important - the devastation he would leave behind him in his mindless fury was.

Tsunade was familiar with the results of rampaging biju, and was pale as she spoke - as Hokage, not thinking about this eventuality was a failure on her part. "So what's your plan and what does it have to do with this mad idea of yours?"

"I need an Uzumaki child to transfer Kurama to, if worst came to worst," Naruto said simply, and Tsunade's gasp told him she had understood what he meant - to make his child a jinchūriki like himself.

Like the Fourth had done with him.

Tsunade's mouth was set in a hard line, her jaw clenched tight. "I see... And it couldn't be anyone else but an Uzumaki - anyone else, and Kyūbi would fry their chakra coils."

Naruto nodded, his expression just as serious. "If I get a child soon, I can teach the kid about the Kyūbi, and what it means to be a jinchūriki." It was more than he'd had. "Plus, given enough time I'm sure I can get Kurama to actually like the kid, _and_ I can get the child used to demonic chakra since infancy. If I did that, I can pretty much promise there will be no complications or chakra rejection on the day of the transfer."

Tsunade had a soft, gentle look that didn't fit her Godaime Hokage persona. That was all his baa-chan. "Are you really sure about this, Naruto?"

Naruto smiled at her - a wistful smile, but an honest one. "This is for Konoha. As Hokage, I can't ask anyone to do something I wouldn't be ready to do myself." His smile widened, and there was real happiness in it. "Plus, I wouldn't say no to a kid of my own. I like kids."

"You'd make a great father, Naruto. I trust you." Tsunade's soft expression reminded him of Iruka-sensei, but it didn't last. Soon Godaime Tsunade Senju was back. "Why are you offering to bear the child as a woman, though? Why Kakashi? If you really don't want to wait to marry a girl you love, and want the child _now_ , you could ask a kunoichi. From what I hear, you wouldn't lack volunteers."

Naruto didn't correct her assumption that the person he would one day marry would automatically belong to a gender able to bear him children. This conversation was embarrassing enough, he had no intention to also discuss his sex life or even sexual orientation with his baa-chan. Not now, not ever.

"Not happening. What would I say? 'Hello, would you have my baby, even though we're not in love or anything? But then I get to keep the child, sorry, I need to raise him or her myself.'" Naruto made a dismissing gesture. "Seriously, I don't want to have a baby at the cost of the mother's happiness. Instead... Think about this!" The blond breast-equipped Uzumaki planted his hands on the desk and leaned forward, conviction burning in his eyes.

"This way we could kill two birds with one stone. I henge, I carry this baby, and then voilà, we have a child who's both Uzumaki _and_ Hatake. White chakra and huge reserves and all that, and my kid gets to be the most awesome ninja ever." If one considered that one day the child would inherit the Kyūbi, that would make him or her the most powerful asset of Konoha.

Tsunade frowned. "There's no certainty the kid is going to inherit the Hatake's kekkai genkai, I hope you know that. We don't have enough information about any possible Uzumaki kekkai genkai."

Naruto swatted her doubts away like with a fly - it wasn't as he was doing all of this for a kekkai genkai he hadn't even known existed the day before. This had deeper reasons. "Yeah, I can't guarantee that - but so can't any other woman. Even if the child doesn't inherit that, at least I will have for sure someone to leave Kurama to. Best case, we both win, worst case scenario, only Kurama wins." The fact that Konoha would in any case win a jinchūriki to keep on using to strengthen its position went unsaid.

Tsunade still wasn't convinced, he could see it. "What if the child by chance doesn't inherit your chakra stores? There _are_ record of small-gifted Uzumaki, just like there are Hyūga without a Byakugan, you know."

Naruto hadn't thought of that, but he soon came up with a solution: "Well, one more reason to actually carry the baby. That way I can have Kurama expose the baby to small doses of demonic chakra for nine months to build an immunity and force the development of its chakra coils enough to house him."

A long, long minute passed in silence after that, the only noise being the ticking on the clock on the wall and the faint voices coming from a few hallways down. Naruto spent that time looking at his bandaged arm, opening and closing his hand out of reflex. Was he doing the right thing? Was this a good idea? Sure, if it went well, everyone would gain something from it, but...

Naruto would get a child to pass Kurama to, Konoha would get both a new jinchūriki and a heir to the dying Hatake Clan, Kakashi-sensei would be spared some mental turmoil by having to interact with someone he trusted. If baa-chan was right and being a father could help Kakashi-sensei... Then Naruto would try and get Kakashi-sensei to actually bond with his child (if he could make Kurama like a little human, he was going to take his chances with Kakashi-sensei).

And yet something felt wrong. Could it really be this simple? Through the years, Naruto had learnt to distrust things that looked too good to be true. But this was no enemy territory, where an enemy trap could be sprung on him. If he walked into an ambush, it would be one of his own making. Was it worth it?

"It's almost five. Don't you have a shift at the Mission Desk?"

Tsunade's sudden question startled Naruto. The boy-turned-girl looked at the clock - and she was right. With a sigh, Naruto stood up, piling the scattered paperwork with little grace, glancing at the Godaime.

The blond Senju caught his look and the unsaid question in his eyes, nodding. "I will consider your offer, Naruto, don't worry." She held up two fingers. "On two conditions, though. First, I want to run a series of checks on you to see if everything works and you're really able to bear a child. You're going to stay female without ever shifting back for at least a month to let me run some tests. Report tomorrow morning at the hospital at 8 at the gynaecological ward."

Naruto nodded, having expected something like that.

"The second condition is that Kakashi accepts. He deserves to have an opinion on this. He will probably want to talk with you as well before deciding."

Naruto nodded again, and asked "When are you going to ask him?"

"Only after we have a definite answer about you. No sense in asking before we're sure."

Naruto nodded for the third time. He glanced around to make sure all papers had been picked up, and once satisfied with his handiwork he headed to the door. Tsunade's chuckle stopped him. When he looked at her, she was smirking. "People are going to freak out seeing you like this."

Naruto looking down at his (hot) female body and answered with a similar smirk. "It's going to be fun." It was going to be like a great prank on the whole Village.

"What are you going to tell them? Not the truth, I hope." Naruto pouted, offended his baa-chan had so little faith in him. One never revealed the punch line before it was time. "Nah, I'll just tell them I'm experimenting. It's the truth, after all." Naruto snorted. "Don't worry, one thing is sure: I won't tell Kakashi-sensei."

Tsunade grinned at him. "Is it alright to call him 'sensei' when you want to have his baby?"

Naruto froze, a grimace on his face as his mind provided him with a brief image of himself and Kakashi-sensei having _sex_ ."Please, _please_ , never say that again." If he never thought about Kakashi-sensei like _that,_ it would still be too soon.

Naruto shivered and shrugged. _Dammit_ , now the picture was stuck in his head. Thank you, baa-chan. He changed subject by asking "Will you be at the hospital tomorrow?"

Tsunade nodded. "If you want to do this, I will be following you through every step, Naruto." He felt relieved at having his almost-grandmother helping him through this. The physical part of getting pregnant and giving birth kind of scared him, and he was glad to have her beside him.

Then, she said something he hadn't expected.

"You're doing this for Kakashi as well, I know it. You don't have to sacrifice yourself. He doesn't deserve it." Her voice was hard, almost angry. Naruto, one hand on the door handle, squared his shoulders and looked down at her. He would not stand for her to insult a hero he loved and admired.

"I'm doing this for myself and the Village. I need an heir, and the Village needs its jinchūriki. But... If a _friend_ needs my help because the Village also needs an Hatake, then it is my _duty_ and _privilege_ to help him."

Naruto didn't wait for an answer. He turned the handle down with maybe more force than necessary and exited the room, closing the door behind him and stormed down the hallway, pigtails swishing behind him.


	3. Chapter Three

**Rant corner:** You may have noticed - since everything up to this point was narrated from Naruto's point of view - that even in female form Naruto thinks of himself as male. ( _Example:_ _Naruto looked down at his chest and frowned. He covered his breasts with his hands_ _. "Stop looking at my boobs!"_ ) This is purposeful, and will carry on thorough all the fic.

In pretty much every other fanfic I've read, Naruto changes gender depending on his sex. One minute he's a boy and a "him", the next he's sporting boobs and suddenly thinks of himself as a "her". That doesn't make sense, and is born of laziness.

I can think of only one instance where Naruto is actually genderfluid: he thinks of himself as "him" and "her" depending on whether he's currently sporting a penis or boobs, but that's on purpose, due to how he grew up. (The fic I'm talking about is **"An Invincible Summer"** by **ShanaStoryteller** , on AO3. Let's make this my weekly fanfic recommendation!)

My Naruto, instead, is a man, and thus thinks of himself as male, no matter if he's in henge or not. There will be no "Naruko" (meaning a _true_ female Naruto), there's only going to be a Naruto who happens to (temporarily) have a vagina. He will not start to act feminine, he will not flirt randomly, he will not change his mannerism. Now that I think about it, he's going to be the most masculine woman ever. *snickers* Now, this is going to be hilarious. Also, Naruto is going to go back to being male as soon as he's given birth, with his great relief.

Review comment for **Teacuppy** (who disabled private messaging): Thank you for reviewing both! You're really my most loyal follower 3 I try my very best to keep the quality high for a simple reason: I'm a picky reader. I studied how narrative is written, and I read a lot, so I'm terribly picky about my reading. I don't care if a fanfic has a great plot: if it's grammatically inaccurate or poorly written, I can't read it. So, I try to write something that someone as picky as me would read. If it passes the test, it gets posted xD

Now... Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you the three people that made this chapter possible! **Angel Fantasy** , who was recruited as co-author! An applause, please. She's my Occam Razor: her well-aimed comments already saved me from doing something monumentally OCC in this chapter.

 **Giorgia** , my beta reader, who despite not being well acquainted with Naruto listens to me raving about plot and characters and discusses of writing techniques with me.

Las but not least, **NinjaMoogle** , who betaed and helped me with the fight scenes (I can't write fight scenes worth shit) and listened patiently while I raved about plot holes and such. Plus, she's my personal expert on all things Japanese.

Then, about the elephant in the room: how late this chapter was. Chapter one and two were published one right after the other for the simple reason that I wrote them on the spur of the moment. After that, I had to put writing on a hold in order to plan the whole plot. And believe me, there were LOTS of things that needed revising. Only when I felt I had a good enough grasp on the whole plot I came back to writing chapter three. At least I know where this is going!

Now, let's go with the story!

 **I made a Fanart cover: redhothollyberries (put a dot here) tumblr (another dot) com / post / 145751290179**

* * *

 **Chapter Three**

Naruto hummed softly as he read the mission request, distractedly wrapping a lock of his long blond hair around his finger. A silk merchant from Fire asked for a ninja guard for a double mission - first to go to the Land of Lightning to pick up a load of silk textiles, then to tour the Land of Fire to sell his merchandise.

The Mission Desk Assignment Office was the beating heart of Konoha - and it was a well-oiled machine at that, every cog turning neatly. Clients' request were written down by Admin chūnin, then those forms were turned to Senior chūnin who determined the rank of the mission and gave an estimate of the cost. If the client accepted the fee (and paid the deposit), those same chūnin would write down a mission assignment, which in turn would be reviewed by a Coordinator jōnin. The jōnin would approve it and assign it to the team roster. D-rank and C-rank missions usually weren't assigned to a particular team - it was up to the genin and chūnin teams to choose which one to take (in an 'early bird gets the worm' philosophy). B-rank and A-rank missions, on the other hand, were usually assigned to a particular team, choosing the team most suited for the specifics of the mission.

For Naruto, his Mission Assignment was Hokage training, so he switched between the three jobs depending on his shift, despite his jōnin rank. Tsunade had been adamant that he needed to know how the Village worked inside-out, and she was right. Plus, Naruto liked it - it gave him the chance to get to know every one of Konoha's ninja.

Naruto chewed on the end of his pencil, deep in thought, and glanced at the map of the Five Great Shinobi Nations Map hanging on the wall on his right. Konoha and Iwa 's weren't in a state of barely-hidden hostility anymore, technically - but ninja had long memories, and both sides were unlikely to let grudges from the Third Shinobi War go easily. While the merchant only requested protection against bandits, he had to consider the high chances of meeting aggressive Iwa ninja, and the eventuality of a skirmish. He couldn't send low-ranked ninja in enemy territory, that was for sure.

Naruto looked at the estimated time for the whole voyage: five months. That was a long-ass mission for only one team - but if he rotated three teams, it would become bearable.

Naruto hummed: he could send a jōnin team for the trip to Iwa, have a chūnin team switch with them for the northern selling itinerary of the merchant, then in turn switch them with a genin team for the southern itinerary. While the northern itinerary would skim Rain, Grass, Waterfall and Sound, the southern itinerary was deep into Fire territory, far away from any enemy nation - it sounded like an ideal C mission to get a genin team used to life on the road.

Satisfied, Naruto nodded to himself and penned an answer for the merchant, detailing how his guard would switch throughout the travel and the exact fee for the mission. He debated whether to just put it with all the other answers, to be picked up by the clients themselves in the afternoon at the Hokage tower, or to have the answer delivered directly to the merchant. Then he looked again at figure the he man would be paying for their services, and decided for the latter - considering the size of the mission, the man deserved to be contacted directly.

Naruto touched a seal engraved in a metal plaque on the left corner of his desk, releasing a small burst of chakra. The seal glowed white for a moment, then faded. Naruto rolled up the scroll and looked expectantly at the rear door of the Mission Assignment Room. Less than a minute later the door opened and a chūnin in her mid-twenties entered - her orange armband denoting her as belonging to the Communication Corps - and looked around, trying to guess which of the many Mission Assignment chūnin had called for a courier.

Naruto raised a hand and waved her over. "Here, Inko-san!" The kunoichi headed his way, only to stop abruptly halfway. "Na... Naruto-san?," she asked, her voice wavering in disbelief, her eyebrows halfway up into her hairline. Naruto chuckled, crossing his arms under his breasts to underline their (generous) curve. "Yes, Inko-san?"

He was having a field day, shocking people left and right. It could almost be worth having a period. _Almost_.

Inko blinked, then flashed her hands into a tiger seal. "Kai!"

Naruto's smile widened into a shit-eating grin. That made five people who had tried the genjutsu dissipation. Not bad for a morning of work.

When nothing changed, Inko stepped forward to his desk, her orange eyes suddenly suspicious. "Why are you a woman, Naruto-san?" Naruto tried to rein in his fox grin and assume an innocent expression. From the way Inko's left eyebrow rose, he wasn't very successful. "I'm just experimenting with my Henge. I have Tsunade-baa-chan's approval." There, throwing his relationship with the Godaime Hokage in was a good way to get people to stop asking him questions.

Inko shook her head in disapproval, but no one could stay irritated at him for long, and eventually she smiled. "Well, I do hope you're not using that to get into the women's side of the bathhouse."

Naruto gripped the left side of his chest as if his heart hurt - or more specifically, his left boob, making the kunoichi laugh. "How could you think something like that of me, Inko-san! I thought we were friends!" Naruto liked Inko, she was funny. Plus, her shaggy black hair had two bright orange streaks in it. How cool was that? Having orange hair?

"Your teacher was the Legendary Pervert, so..." the woman gave another chuckle, then seemed to remember her job and straightened up. "What do you need delivered?," she asked, pulling a notebook and a pencil from her side pouches.

Naruto held out the scroll. "This is for Shiruku Urite, a merchant staying at the Pink Blossom Inn." Inko wrote it down, giving a low whistle. "Rich guy," she commented, taking the scroll and putting it into her shoulder bag with the Communication Corps insignia. Naruto nodded. "Yup, he's a big client."

"Well, I'll deliver this right away, then. Bye Naruto-san!" She waved at him and turned, disappearing into a perfect Shunshin, trademark of the Communication Corps.

Naruto went back to work, inwardly grinning at Inko's accusation - as if he was going to be stuck in female form for a year without reaping at least _some_ benefits. (He could almost imagine Ero-sennin strutting about in the Afterlife, all proud of his pupil.) He was _so_ going to hit Konoha's bathhouses sooner or later to mix with the ladies.

He was going to miss the men's side of the bathhouses, though. He tried to find consolation in telling himself that it would be only for a year. He could survive.

With a chuckle, Naruto wrote down the three mission assignments - a C rank for a genin team, a C rank for a chūnin team and a B rank for a jōnin team. Technically, he shouldn't write those down until the merchant had officially approved his estimate offer, but the man was obviously going to accept anyway, so why not start working ahead?

He re-read the assignments and had an idea. Technically, assigning missions to specific teams wasn't his job - it was the Mission Assignment Coordinator's. However, Naruto had the perfect team in mind for the B rank: Team Sumato was a good tracker team, with a Hyuuga and an Inuzuka. They would be able to spot trouble long before it found them, and with a little luck they would avoid conflict with Iwa ninja completely. Also, all members happened to be in Konoha, Naruto was pretty sure of that.

With a satisfied smile, Naruto wrote 'suggestion: Team Sumato' on the first mission assignment, then rolled up all the three papers and put them in the 'on hold' box behind him. They would most likely be checked by the Mission Assignment Coordinator in the afternoon before being dispatched and assigned.

Naruto twisted on his chair to look up at the big clock hung on the wall behind him. Only ten more minutes and his shift would be over.

He turned back to his desk and fished out another mission request from the (never-ending) pile on the left corner of his desk. As he was starting to read it - an old man requesting a genin team to weed his garden (read as: a retired shinobi was bored and wanted to amuse himself by picking on the youngest generation) - someone entered the Mission Assignment Room by the main door. Someone very green and very loud, accompanied by someone just as green and loud.

"If my youthful pupil can climb the Hokage mountain only with his hands, then I shall accompany him despite my injury to prove my youth!," Naruto overheard Gai saying - well, he wasn't listening in _per se_ , not when the jōnin was pretty much shouting.

Naruto was glad to see that being confined into a wheelchair and having his right leg in a permanent cast didn't do anything to smother Gai's 'power of youth', but the elegantly dressed Mission Desk chūnin who Gai and Lee were approaching didn't seem to agree with him, if Hyō 's comically wide eyes were any clue.

Hopelessly, Hyō tried to make himself as small as possible behind his desk - difficult, considering he was one of the tallest men Naruto knew - and tried to hide his face behind some paperwork he picked in haste.

Naruto tried not to laugh at his colleague's evident panic.

Tried and failed.

Hyō shot him a _look_ , his midnight-blue eyes practically begging Naruto to save him, please, please, he'd do whatever, just save him from the green freaks before they dragged him to run ten laps around Konoha _again_ , please.

Taking pity on the man, Naruto waved at the pair - no, wait, trio, Tenten was there as well. Uh, her presence was always overshadowed by her teammate's and ex-sensei's. "Hey there, Gai-san, Lee, Tenten!" The three ninja waved back and changed course. Hyō looked at Naruto as if he might cry in relief.

 _'You owe me one,'_ Naruto silently mouthed Hyō , and the man nodded enthusiastically, his long black hair flying everywhere, before diving back into his paperwork, eager to attract as little attention as possible.

Silently laughing at his co-worker's misery, Naruto moved his attention to his friends - only to find them frozen, looking at him agape. Oh yeah, he had boobs. He kept on forgetting that. Ops.

"Kunoichi-san, are you perhaps related to Uzumaki Naruto?" Lee asked, his eyes shining eagerly - and Gai backed him up: "You look very much like him!"

Behind them, Tenten silently facepalmed.

Well, _that_ was new one.

For a split second, Naruto entertained the idea of pretending to be his long-lost twin sister. She could have a cool backstory, like being kidnapped from Iwa ninja the night they were born, and, and... And being raised by the toads on Mount Myoboku, where they reunited many years later with a great deal of misunderstanding and brotherly love! Yeah, that sounded cool.

Then he thought of what baa-chan would do to him if she heard word of that, and gave up. Chuckling at the idea, Naruto leaned back into his chair and waved his friends over. "Lee, Gai-san, it's me. I'm just under Henge."

Lee sent him a puzzled look, his bushy eyebrows scrunching close. "Why are you pretending to be a woman?," he asked and Gai followed suit, with a serious expression that looked very much out of place on him. "It's not a very youthful endeavour to deceive people like that, Naruto-kun."

Naruto laughed uneasily, rubbing the back of his nape, feeling awkward under their scrutiny. "Peace, peace. I'm not deceiving anyone, I'm just experimenting to see how long I can keep an Henge. It's nothing bad, I swear."

Oh, magic words. Or at least he thought he had said them, for Lee's and Gai's expression immediately morphed into one of approval and pride, their eyes shining. "Testing oneself to overcome one's limits is truly a youthful endeavour indeed!," Lee said, raising a fist in a victory sign, while Gai leaned forward in his wheelchair to take Naruto's hand into his own larger ones, his black eyes bearing into the blonde's. "Please forgive us for jumping to defamatory conclusions, unworthy of any youthful ninja! I shall do three hundred push-ups in shame!"

Naruto blinked, slipping his hand out from Gai's hold. "Uh... Okay? I'm sorry? You're welcome? There... There's really no need to do that...?" Weirded out and feeling really out of his depth, it was Naruto's turn to look at someone else for help. Tenten snorted at his puzzled stare and jabbed Lee in the ribs none too gently - it wasn't as if she would have been able to hurt the taijutsu freak even if she put all her strength in it, anyway. "Lee, don't you have a mission report to give Naruto?"

The younger green-clad shinobi stood to attention, seemingly remembering himself. "Yosh!" Lee fished out a scroll from one of the side pouches of his jōnin vest and handed it to Naruto. "Tokubetsu jōnin Rock Lee, and chūnin Mori Tenten, reporting from a successful B-rank mission!" Lee's fingers drummed a very quick rhythm on his thigh, as if forcing his body to stay still long enough to hand in a report was too much to ask of him. The boy had so much energy it was a pain for him to stand to attention.

"Did you encounter any enemy ninja?" Given that their mission had been to the east of the Land of Fire, Naruto highly doubted it, but protocol demanded he asked. As he expected, Lee answered "No, Naruto-kun!"

"Did anything else of interest happen?" Again, Lee answered negatively, and Naruto dropped his report in the first drawer of the filing cabinet at his right, labelled 'Priority 1 Report Review', to be read later. The two drawers beneath it bore the labels 'Priority 2' and 'Priority 3'. Priority 1 reports were read and filed by the people manning the Mission Desk, while Priority 2 reports were sent to the Intelligence Division. All Priority 3 reports, however, were for the Hokage's eyes only.

Formalities fulfilled, Naruto stood up and joined his friends on the other side of the desk. He didn't like talking to them sitting behind a desk - he was set on not letting his position come between him and his friends. He wouldn't be a Hokage who lived above his people, instead of amongst them as it should be. "How was it? Did you have fun?," he asked, smiling widely.

Tenten snorted, casually bumping her teammate. "It's not as if I had the time to enjoy the sights. You see, _someone_ thought it would be a _youthful_ endeavour to see if he could get to the city of Sentan in under four days."

Lee, under the mistaken impression she had been praising him, puffed his chest out, preening like the peacock he looked like in his green suit. Tenten rolled her eyes at Naruto, _look at what I have to live with_ , and Naruto laughed. "And we did, yosh! Didn't we, Tenten?" Tenten rolled her eyes again, but nodded at Lee, "Indeed."

Tenten stepped close to Naruto and spoke close to his ear, covering her mouth - but her stage-whisper betrayed her words for everyone to hear: "The last day Lee didn't run as much as he ran _from_ _me_. The ass refused to share his ration bars until we got to the village, and I might have... Snapped. A little bit."

Naruto laughed out loud at that. He could kind of picture the scene, and it was a hilarious one. He wished he could have seen that. "I take that shuriken were involved in the chase?" Tenten grinned, a tad evilly. "You could say that."

Lee smiled and stuck his 'good guy' pose, his caterpillar eyebrows seemingly given a life of their own as they wriggled. "My teammate is a most youthful kunoichi, always training, even when travelling! She never stops practicing her aim!" Naruto's laugh came back with a vengeance, to the point he had to lean back against his desk to stay upright.

Tenten muttered something that sounded awfully like _'why do I even try'_ , but she was smiling. Much like with Naruto, nobody could get truly angry at Lee for long - even if, in Naruto's opinion, that was because Lee was so _eager_ and clueless it made you feel like kicking a puppy. In his case it was more because of his devilishly good looks. (Either that, or Sakura was right and people thought he was 'adorable'. But he refused to accept that.)

Gai beamed at his two ex-students, manly tears running down his cheeks. "I'm so proud of my students! The Power of Youth burns so brightly in all of you!" Lee was moved to just as manly tears by his ex-sensei's praise, and the two hugged - complete with a majestic sunset on the background. For a taijutsu specialist, Gai sure was good at setting that kind of genjutsu without handseals.

Naruto exchanged an awkward glance with Tenten, who just shrugged. Naruto liked Gai and Lee, even if it was kind of exhausting to be their friend, mentally _and_ physically. (However, Naruto didn't fail to notice that Tenten, just like him, was avoiding to look at them. In the many years she spent under her sensei, that sight had probably been seared into her retinas _forever_.)

Naruto felt the need to change subject. B-rank meant two days of obligatory leave for both Lee and Tenten, so... "Will you be there for our Thursday pub night?," he asked. Bad luck made it so that the two had missed the past four pub nights in a row. 'Konoha's Eleven Gang' made a point to keep in contact as often as possible - after all they had gone through, they were thick as thieves.

Tenten nodded. "Sure! It's been a while." Her grin was a sly one. "Is Kiba still trying to ask Sakura out?"

Before Naruto could answer, Lee emerged from his hug with Gai and butted in, eyes wide and mouth slack in surprise and outrage. "What? That dog is trying to court my delicate cherry blossom!? If he dared to lay even a single finger on her, I'll-"

Laughter bubbled up in Naruto's throat as he gaped, managing to choke on his own spit.

Delicate cherry blossom? _Sakura_? I-can-kill-you-with-a-punch Sakura? I'm-as-delicate-as-a-dropkick-to-the-face Sakura? Were they _even_ talking about the same person? He didn't know Lee was still after Sakura, that was too precious! He was soooo teasing his teammate to death. (His own, probably, but it would be _sooo_ worth it.)

Thankfully, Gai showed he hadn't earned his jōnin rank without being able to read the atmosphere, and leaned forward in his wheelchair to put a hand on Lee's arm, reprimanding him. "It's not youthful to speak ill of people who are not here to defend themselves, Lee-kun." The newly-minted tokubetsu jōnin calmed down immediately, a serious expression on his face, his overly bushy eyebrows scrunched together. "You are right, Gai-sensei! I shall find Kiba-kun and I challenge him to a duel for Sakura-san's hand!"

Without so much as a bye-your-leave, Lee turned on his heels and ran out of the Mission Desk room, leaving behind a resigned Tenten, an amused Gai and a puzzled Naruto. One never got bored when the ex-Team Ten was involved.

Tenten shook his head, then shrugged. "Whatever. I'm too tired to go after him." She turned towards her ex-sensei. "Shouldn't you follow him?" Gai seemed to ponder the question. "I probably should go cheer his youthful endeavour, yosh," he said, turning his wheelchair to follow after Lee.

"I meant that you should stop him before he does something stupid, sensei," Tenten corrected him, snorting and crossing her arms over her chest. Gai looked back at her and wriggled his eyebrows, giving her a thumbs up. "How could I smother his Power of Youth, yosh?" Naruto wasn't fluent in Gai-speak, but he had strong suspicions that meant the jōnin wanted to have a good laugh at his ex-student's expense.

"As if," Tenten snorted again. Gai's hands went to the wheels of his chair - but then he suddenly seemed to remember something, for he stopped and turned towards Naruto.

"Is my hip rival back in Konoha?," he asked, and Naruto nodded, squashing firmly any improper thoughts about his sensei- no, about _Kakashi_. He smiled as if nothing was wrong and answered: "Sure. He came back yesterday morning. He'll be in the Village for at least two days." Again, obligatory rest after a B-rank mission.

Gai beamed his white-toothed trademark smile. "Good! It's time I challenge him to a new youthful duel. The score is currently eighty-nine to eighty-five in his favour, and I shall rectify that!" The green-clad jōnin waved at the two and wheeled out of the room. While the man was (obviously) off duty, he often accompanied his ex-students to the Mission Assignment to keep up with their progresses.

Tenten tilted her head at Naruto, smiling. "Well, I'll be off as well. I need a shower, food and a bed." Naruto glanced up at the clock on the wall. Five minutes past one. "My shift is over. Wanna grab something to eat together?"

Tenten hummed, then nodded, uncrossing her arms. "Sure, why not." She grinned at him, poking him in the ribs. "Not ramen, though. I need meat." Naruto pouted at the thought that someone might like any food better than ramen, but he acquiesced easily - he'd had Ichiraku ramen (and lots of it) for dinner just the previous evening, to get over the shock Tsunade had dropped on his head.

Naruto quickly made sure he hadn't left any important document lying around (he hadn't), then checked he still had all his belongings on him, like his precious frog-wallet Gama-chan. Satisfied, Naruto picked up his trademark red haori with black flames from the coat rack and put it on.

He turned to Tenten, smiling. "Shall we go?"

* * *

Soon after he finished his meal, Naruto went running.

Running was very important. Naruto would have gone as far as to say that running was _fundamental_ for a ninja, for it was hands down the best way to build up stamina. Ninja were often required to run for hours on end on a mission - and if they happened to be running _from_ someone, a ninja short of breath was a very dead ninja. And aside from being able to run for long periods of time, stamina was important in a fight: if you couldn't beat your opponent by taking them by surprise, outlasting them was the second best way to win a fight.

Naruto knew that very well. Kakashi-sen- _Kakashi_ had been adamant on that, and Jiraiya-sensei even more so. Even if Naruto was gifted with a naturally freaky stamina, he still needed to run like everyone else to keep his muscles fit.

That didn't make running any better in Naruto's book.

Running was important, but Naruto _hated_ running. He hated it with a passion.

Running was soooo boring. There were only so many hours he could spend running before he came to know every inch of the training grounds and the forest surrounding Konoha. It was just soooo boring to run in circles seeing always the same things! At least when he had been travelling with Ero-sennin there was always something new to see! But no, not in Konoha. Damn, he knew every tree and track like the back of his hand by now!

When there was someone running with him it wasn't so bad, because at least he could chat. It wasn't his fault he got bored so easily! When he didn't have anything (or any _one_ ) to distract him, every mile felt like a thousand. And so was that day, for he hadn't found anyone to con into running with him. His favourite running (and sparring) partner, a jōnin named Dansei, was out of the village with his genin team for their first C rank mission, and his second favouritest partner, Sai, was nowhere to be found, the bastard.

Naruto was used to running six or seven miles every two or three days, but that afternoon he stopped only two miles in when he reached training ground twenty-three, giving up when he got so bored he got _this_ close to summoning Gamakichi to run in his stead.

Boredom, however, was only half of the reason he just gave up: his boobs were hurting him.

'Hurting him' as in that for every step he ran, they bounced and on the long run (ah, _pun_ ) that _hurt_. Naruto hadn't thought much about it when he had dressed that morning, for he (obviously) didn't have a bra lying around at home ready to use. As he looked at himself in the mirror, he had only spared one thought about bras, vaguely thinking he'd buy one sooner or later.

Well, that 'sooner or later' had just became a 'sooner _rather than_ later', for he had severely underestimated how uncomfortable big boobs were. He wished he had thought of at least binding them with a spare roll of bandages. _Anything_ would have been more comfortable than feeling them bounce so much.

With a sigh, Naruto massaged the upper part of his breasts, soothing the soreness. Back when he had experimented with his Henge, Ero-sennin had kept him busy with his infiltration training and Naruto hadn't exercised much, making this a completely new discovery.

As Naruto looked around training ground twenty-three - grass and packed earth and a pretty pond - he wondered how Hinata could fight. Or, Kami forbid, Tsunade. But since they did and never once gave sign of being uncomfortable, Naruto imagined it all changed when breasts were properly contained in a bra. Kami, but he wanted one _now_.

Why had he made his female form with such big boobs? Oh, yeah, they looked good. Hindsight was a bitch. Naruto carded one hand through his long hair, pouting. He couldn't even shift to make them smaller, for Tsunade had forbidden him from changing _anything_ about his Henge. She had said that any change of his Henge would likely reset his biological rhythms and since that morning he had started his month-long check up, she had no intention of starting over again.

Running was out, but Naruto still had to warm up as he waited for Sakura to arrive. With the ease born of long years of training, Naruto fell on all fours and started doing push-ups, his body taut and his muscles coiled like springs as his arms bore his weight up and down.

The exams at the hospital had gone pretty much the way Naruto had imagined. Tsunade had pricked him with needles to get a few blood samples, and told him he would have to submit himself to that once every three days. Joy. She had said she wanted to keep a close watch on his hormone production throughout his cycle. It made sense, he guessed, but that didn't make it any better. He hadn't even gotten a lollipop for his efforts! (He was starting to understand why Kakashi-sen- _Kakashi_ , dammit - hated hospitals.)

When he reached his hundredth push-up, Naruto shifted his weight and bent his left arm behind his back, seamlessly moving to one-armed push-ups. After a set of a hundred, he changed arms and did another hundred with his right arm behind his back.

He had also expected some kind of gynaecological exam, given what the purpose of that farce was. Tsunade had him take his shirt off and lie on his back on a bed, where she palpated his breasts (weird) and his belly (even weirder), her hands glowing green. The feeling of foreign chakra seeping inside him through his flesh had Naruto shivering, feeling sick to the stomach. She had explained that it was just a medic-nin technique that allowed her to 'see' the organs through touch alone - in particular, it had allowed her to see that his womb and ovaries looked healthy, if somewhat atrophied. But considering it was only his second day in female form, it was to be expected - or so she had said. Naruto trusted her.

Finished with his push-ups, Naruto sat on the grass and rolled his shoulders to loosen them. With a huff, he then laid on his back and interwove his fingers behind his nape, mentally beginning to count as he started to do his hundred sit-ups.

The only thing he hadn't expected had been to meet Aishimasu Hyūga, chakra specialist, in the gynaecological ward. Not that he didn't like her - she was a nice woman without any of the (in)famous Hyūga arrogance - but he hadn't expected a chakra check-up. Tsunade had explained she wanted to know more of how his solid Henge worked, though, so it kind of made sense? Aishimasu had studied Naruto's chakra paths with her Byakugan extensively the previous year (when Tsunade had subjected him to a thousand _very_ thorough exams to study his jinchūriki physique, tired of playing pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey whenever she had to heal Naruto), and the Hyūga's perfect memory had allowed her to compare male-Naruto's chakra paths to female-Naruto's ones. The verdict had been that they were a hundred percent identical - not even two identical twins had chakra paths so similar.

Naruto jerked his hips upwards and effortlessly jumped to his feet. Cracking his knuckles, Naruto looked around for a means to test Aishimasu's and Tsunade's hypothesis - that Naruto should be able to use his chakra as if nothing had changed. Back then when he had been fifteen with Jiraiya-sensei he had tried a few jutsu in his female form, but he hadn't tested that thoroughly. (He had been too busy testing _other things_ thoroughly.)

With an amused snort Naruto repressed all memories about his firsts sexual exploits (oh Kami, he had been so _young_ ), and headed to the pond. Since there were no trees on training ground twenty-three, he would skip tree-walking and try his hand at water-walking - hoping he got it right on the first try, for he really didn't want to get wet.

Clasping his hands in a ram seal, Naruto focused a steady flow of chakra to in his feet - usually he bypassed the ram seal completely, but as he couldn't be sure his tenketsu would release chakra without hiccups, better safe than sorry. Slowly, he stepped with his right foot on the pond's surface to test the waters (ah, pun again!). Since the sole of his sandal didn't seem to be sinking, he took another step and left the dry ground for good - and would you look at that, the water seemed to hold him without problem.

Naruto took a few cautious steps, taking care not to shift his weight too much. Mh, it seemed good.

Since patience and Naruto went along as well as porcupines and balloons, the blond Uzumaki decided that 'careful' was overrated and did a backflip, still holding the ram seal. He landed squarely on his feet just as if he had done it on dry land, and smirked. Everything was working properly.

He released the ram seal, aaaaaand... Nothing happened. The feeling of his chakra enveloping his feet was exactly the same as always.

Satisfied with himself (his Henge was _the best_ , so _of course_ he could fight!), Naruto preened and looked around, hoping to see Sakura. He really wanted to boast about his skills.

Sadly, there was no Sakura anywhere - he couldn't feel her chakra nearby, either. Hospital duties had probably delayed her. Too bad. He'd have to find something to entertain himself as he waited for her. (He never doubted she wouldn't come. She never missed their weekly sparring match.)

Naruto looked down at his feet, sheathed in blue chakra, barely rippling the water. He shrugged, humming in thought. Revising katas was always good for muscle memory, and doing it on water had the added bonus of testing his instinctive chakra control. If he managed to stay on top of the water even when not actively concentrating on that, it meant that both his chakra control and the way his tenketsu released chakra hadn't changed.

With a smile, Naruto loosened his shoulders and took the starting stance of his kata, right arm guarding his chin and left arm guarding his side, feet evenly spread. He shifted - step, step, punch, low dip, turn, _kick_ , step back. Naruto huffed, imagining an invisible shinobi in front of him, and the best ways to incapacitate him. Step, step, a fast jab, raising his guard to block a possible countermove, a step back, then a high, fast kick that would leave his opponent with a broken jaw at the very least.

Naruto would never be a taijutsu master like Gai or Lee, but his fighting style relied heavily on it. He was most efficient on short range, where he could use his superior speed (thanks dad) and superior strength (thanks Kurama) to pummel the enemy into the ground. Over the years, he had worked on ways to integrate many close-ranged jutsu (thanks again, dad, Rasengan was _so_ cool) into his katas, until they became a seamless part of it, just like punches and kicks.

The result was a taijutsu style that looked like the bastard offspring of a one-night stand between a brawler style and a high-power one, making Kakashi despair over how crude it looked. Naruto just laughed at him, because it worked damn well.

Step, low dip, turn, a Shunshin bringing him behind the invisible opponent's back, a mid-height roundhouse kick snapping out and back without the faintest falter despite the body-flicker. Recover, guard face, guard right flank, _jump_ , kick to the face, sail over the enemy's shoulder, land on a handstand, backflip, foot lashing out as he did, kicking _hard_. Recover, slide back, slide back, high strike, low strike, block with both forearms, dip low, sweep, jump back. Recover, create a Rasengan in his left hand, sprint, feint with his left hand, kick, guard, sweep, punch the fucker in the stomach with the Rasengan.

Since there wasn't actually anyone to pummel to the ground and Naruto didn't want to waste his awesome Rasengan, he chose to end it with a bang. With a fox grin, Naruto jumped, somersaulted and struck the water fist-first. The Rasengan hit the water as if it were a hard surface, vaporizing a good deal of water and raising a huge wave. Shouting in glee, Naruto managed not to sink underwater and instead leapt off - not quick enough to avoid the waves he himself had raised, though.

Mission 'test chakra control in Henge': a success - not even being drenched to the bone could dent his enthusiasm. Good thing it was spring, and the day was warm. He'd dry soon, hopefully.

Still, he'd had enough of water. He liked his long hair much less, stuck to his face as it was.

Shaking himself like a dog, Naruto went back on dry land, taking off his haori, flak jacket and weapon pouches. He wrought out the former, spreading it out on the grass to dry, then debated what to do with the latter - the flak jacket was way too thick to wring out. He checked the pockets, and was satisfied to see that the impervious seals he had put inside of them had worked well - scrolls, wallet, everything was dry. Same thing for the weapon pouches. (Nothing irked ninja more than a rusty kunai.)

With a shrug, he set jacket and pouches on the grass to dry, staying in his long-sleeved black shirt and orange pants. The bandages wrapped around his right forearm were soggy and itchy, but Naruto couldn't take them off - that arm's skin was too delicate to be left exposed in a sparring match.

Talking about his body... Look at that, the wet cloth stuck to his breasts like a second skin, outlining their smooth curve. He could even see his perked nipples underneath the black fabric!

He brushed one - and when a delightful shiver ran down his spine, he snapped his hand back.

Bad Naruto, _bad_. You're training, here. So not the time for _that_.

In that precise moment, a voice called out to him. "Hello Naruto!"

Trust Sakura to always be able to track him when he was having perverted thoughts.

Naruto spun on his feet to face her. He hadn't sensed her coming, for his training bout had taken his complete attention. He was somewhat decent at chakra sensing but he wasn't strong enough for it to be a passive skill: he had to actively concentrate to sense people. "Hello Sakura-chan!"

Sakura waved at him, foregoing walking by taking a few chakra-enhanced jumps that brought her right in front of Naruto. "Sorry I'm late, I've had a very stressful-" The words seemed to die in her mouth as she looked at Naruto, taking in his state. Something told Naruto it wasn't his drenched clothes and dripping hair that shocked her so.

Sakura's green eyes slowly raked Naruto's body from hair to toes, making him feel very uncomfortable.

"I... I can explain?," he tried, shifting awkwardly.

Sakura frowned, glaring at him as if his change of sex personally offended her. And who knew, maybe it did. She was his best friend, but sometime Naruto _really_ couldn't understand her.

"Why are you a woman, Naruto? Is this a new version of your perverted jutsu?," she asked, her voice calm, almost relaxed - but her creepy smile and her raised fist belied that. Naruto took a cautious step back, keeping an eye on her hands. She may have looked beautiful and small and feminine, but Naruto had seen her slam a man through a wall with but a flick of her fingers.

"I swear I'm not! It's not my Sexy jutsu, it's just my Henge!" She didn't look convinced, raising an eyebrow and - more threateningly - her other fist, so he pointed at his clothes. "See, I'm wearing real clothes! I don't have clothes when I do my Sexy jutsu, do I-ayeeee!" No, he most certainly _did not_ squeal like a little girl. That was a manly scream of fear - a perfectly natural reaction to Sakura taking a step forward and swinging a punch at him.

Naruto evaded her fist with a backflip, landing on a handstand and propelling himself further back and away from Sakura with another jump. If she had really meant to pummel him into the ground she wouldn't have had any problems following him - but as she didn't, he took it that she wasn't on a rampage (yet).

"Naruto, you're wearing a wet shirt and I can see your nipples. You'd better find another argument." Naruto looked down at his chest. Oh. Right. The only way it could have been worse was if it'd been a white shirt. Still, he covered the incriminated part with his hands, huffing at Sakura. "Stop looking at my boobs!"

Sakura snorted in a very unlady-like fashion, cracking her knuckles. "Naruto..." She said threateningly, and he raised his hands in surrender. "Alright, alright! I'm a woman because I'm experimenting with my solid Henge. Tsunade-baa-chan wants to study it to see the effects on the body, and see how long I can keep it, and all that. If you don't believe me, ask her! I have her permission!" That was the official cover-up story, at least, and he was sticking to it.

Sakura blinked, lowering her fists. "Solid henge? You can make a solid henge? I didn't know that!" Animosity apparently forgotten, she stepped forward and they were again in normal-friend-speaking range. Naruto, glad that the shitstorm had passed, let her, and answered easily, kind of proud of his skills. "Yup! I've always been able to do it, actually. It can be pretty handy!"

Sakura's left eyebrow rose, and she nibbled on her bottom lip. She always did that when confronted with a puzzle whose pieces didn't fit. "But that's a A-ranked jutsu, and you _suck_ at genjutsu," she said, not mocking him, just stating the truth. She was smart, though, and she already had all the pieces she needed to get to the right conclusion.

"Kitsune are said to be shapeshifters," she said out slowly, as if giving him the chance to correct her. He didn't.

He wasn't ashamed of Kurama, he could never be - the overgrown fox was his friend, and he could never be ashamed of a friend. But he was uneasy with how _different_ being a jinchūriki made him. His whiskers, his strength, his overdeveloped senses, his shapeshift-like Henge, his fox-like traits... He wasn't ashamed per se, but they somehow made him feel less human. He had always been self-conscious about his humanity, and that only had grown tenfold ever since the Fourth Shinobi War and his time as Sage of the Six Paths.

Sakura, bless her heart, seemed to realize it was a sore topic for him, and let it drop. Instead, she let the medic-nin in her out and asked "So, what are the effects of a solid Henge? I'm pretty sure Kakashi-sensei and Kurenai-san can do it, but I never saw them."

Naruto shot her a grateful look, to which she answered with a tiny smile. Really, how could he hope for a better friend? "My Henge physically makes me a woman. Outside..." he pointed at his boobs "...and inside," he said, patting his belly.

Sakura lightened up at that, clapping her hands together, looking like a little girl with a new, shiny toy. "Oh, that's so interesting! Tsunade-shishou put you through a complete medical check, I imagine? What did she say? What else changed? Is your chakra the same? How long can you keep this up? And-"

Naruto laughed and held up his hands, stopping her rain of questions. "Wow, calm down! Geez, you're as bad as baa-chan." He rubbed the back of his nape, smiling. "I'm one hundred percent a woman, through and through. Baa-chan thinks it takes about a fifth of my chakra just to keep it up."

Sakura's eyes widened at that, and Naruto grinned at her surprise, his awkwardness fading in the face of her enthusiasm. "Yup, it's kind of draining. I don't think anyone but me could keep it up for long. I, on the other hand, can keep it going as long as I want. It's not a genjutsu, you can't dispel it - only I can undo it." Yes, he was boasting. No, he had no intention to stop. Yes, he was awesome like that.

"How long have you been in Henge? It can't be more a day or two, or the whole Village would know it." Naruto laughed awkwardly at that, rubbing the back of his nape. The years of people calling him 'demon' behind him back had left him hating gossip. There was no escaping it, though.

"Since yesterday afternoon," he answered. "This morning baa-chan ran a few tests - you know, blood tests, a complete physical exam, that kind of thing." And a gynaecological exam, but he wasn't going to tattle on that." She had Hyūga Aishimasu check my chakra pathways. She said that they're absolutely unchanged, and that I could probably do ninjutsu without any problems." He pointed at the swamp behind his shoulders, then at his drenched clothing. "While I was waiting for you I tried a few katas to see if that was true."

Sakura raised an eyebrow in a haughty way that she was bound to have learnt from Sasuke. "And you went from katas to drowning yourself how…?" Naruto grinned like the fox he housed. "Rasengan!," he answered cheerily.

Sakura's eye went from Naruto to his wet clothes laid to dry to the pond, and her voice was intrigued. "Did you nebulise the water or did you just raise a big wave?"

"Both!" was Naruto's enthusiastic answer. Sakura hummed, crossing her arms and tapping a finger on her elbow. "Would you be able to vaporize enough water to create mist?"

Naruto cocked his head sideways, pondering. "Probably, I guess. Why?"

"Do you remember that jutsu Zabuza Momochi used in our first C-rank? Hiding in the mist technique?"

Trust Sakura to remember what jutsu a Kiri nin had used against them _seven years ago_. "Nope, but I can guess from the name. You want me to try something like that?"

Sakura nodded, a speculative look on her face. She might not have been a genius like Shikamaru, but she was damn smart: throughout the years she had come up with pretty neat ideas, and Naruto didn't doubt that if someone could find a way replicate a Kiri jutsu, that would be Sakura. "Sure, I'll try one day and I'll tell you how it goes." It had been the first time they had seen their sensei's Sharingan, now that he thought about it. Which meant… "Tell you what, I'm pretty sure Kakashi-san copied it that day! I'll ask him to help me out with it."

He inwardly preened at remembering not to call him 'sensei'. Tsunade had been adamant he stopped - she had said that if Naruto really wanted to go along with his plan, he needed Kakashi to recognize him as a peer, and calling him 'sensei' kind of negated that. He understood that: two jōnin could stand on equal ground, teacher and student didn't.

Sakura looked puzzled at the change of honorific on Naruto's part. Naruto saw her opening her mouth, likely to inquire about it, and shook his head resolutely - he didn't want to talk about it. Sakura blinked, puzzled. Then she hummed, rubbing her lips with the back of a finger, observing him with a considering look. Eventually, she let the matter drop and came back to the main subject at hand. "So, you've got a uterus?" _Thank you, Sakura._

"Yup."

"Can you get a period?"

"Yup. I discovered that when I was fifteen and I stayed in this form for more than a month." The memory had him grimacing. Ugh. And he had volunteered to go through that _again_. Sasuke was right, he _was_ a masochist.

"Is a month the longest you've been like that?"

"Yes. I switched back when I fucking started _bleeding_." His disgust must have been obvious, for she laughed. "Yeah, I imagine that must have been a shock," she said in sympathy. Then: "Can you get pregnant?"

Naruto swallowed, trying for indifference. "Probably? I mean, it's not like I actively tried- " _Yet_. "-but it would make sense." He wasn't second-guessing his choice, he really _wasn't_ , but talking about it made him feel vaguely nauseous. It had been his idea, and he was set on seeing it through, he didn't want to talk about it out loud until he had come to terms with it.

On the wake of that question, Naruto almost saw the cogs moving in Sakura's head and stopped her before she could voice any questions about his sexual life in female form. He was _so_ not going there, so he abruptly changed the subject with all the subtlety he was capable of: "Can we spar? I tried to keep my body as close as to my male one as possible, but there are still some differences, and I want to see if they have any effect on my fighting, so can we spar? _Please?_ " Unimpressed with his babbling, Sakura raised an eyebrow, silently calling him on his bullshit, and he upped the ante by giving her the puppy-dog eyes. With a sigh and an eyeroll, Sakura gave in.

"Alright, let's fight. Just so you know, you're freakishly tall for a woman, Naruto. You might have wanted to be a little shorter to blend in better," she said, taking a few steps back and taking her fighting stance.

Relieved, Naruto mirrored her, pushing a rebellious lock of long blond hair behind his ear. "You don't want to warm up first?," he asked, but she shook her head. "I ran all the way here from the hospital, that's warm up enough today." Since the hospital was on the opposite side of the Village from training ground twenty-three, Naruto conceded her point.

He hadn't been kidding when he had said he wanted to test how much that different body affected his fighting. He already noticed that his centre of gravity was lower and he supposed his flexibility as a woman ought to be better, but he wasn't sure. "Taijutsu only?," he asked, and she nodded, slipping on her fighting gloves.

Naruto grinned, adrenaline pumping through his veins. He _so_ loved a good spar. He steadied his stance, distancing his feet and squaring his shoulders. With an arrogant smirk, Sakura beckoned him with a finger - and who was Naruto to deny her?

Without warning, he sprinted towards her at top speed - yet she was ready for him, for when his right fist lashed out in a jab, she side-stepped him easily and rewarded him with a punch of her own to the kidneys. Sakura never went all-out in their spars, but she didn't hold back either - meaning that being hit by her, instead of simply killing you on the spot, only hurt about as much as being hit by a bijudama. Not eager to taste _that_ , Naruto blocked the blow and pivoted on his right foot, aiming a roundhouse kick at her with his other foot.

Sakura ducked below the kick and striking his leg right on a nerve. A burning line of fire shot up from his leg right up to his brain, and Naruto grunted - damn, that _hurt_! - as he jumped away.

"You're not doing a good job at defending your kunoichi's honour," Sakura mocked him, her hands on her hips like a teacher berating a child. Naruto blew some hair off his face, giving an offended whine before launching himself at her again - but as he poised to attack her with a blatant punch, he instead disappeared from in front of her to reappear in a smokeless Shunshin _behind_ her. She turned in time to block his strike with her forearm, but it was a near thing, and she grimaced - Naruto didn't pull his punches.

Sakura countered, aiming for the side he had left uncovered, but he anticipated her blow and caught her fist in his hand, gripping it tight and sending her flying over his head. She recovered mid-air and landed on all fours. She pretended to stand up, then dipped low again and swept her leg in a low arc - right where Naruto's legs used to be, but he did a backflip right in time, jumping above her extended leg and kicking Sakura in the shoulder as he was at it, sending her tumbling backwards from her unstable position.

Naruto landed on his feet with a grimace. "Oh Kami, my boobs are killing me." Jumping and uncontained breasts didn't go along.

Sakura snapped on her feet and laughed. "I bet! Why are you not wearing a bra?" She didn't waste any time and took the initiative, rushing at him.

Naruto grunted, side-stepping her and her dangerous punches. "Of course I'm not! I didn't have any at home!" He blocked a low kick with his leg and retaliated with a jab.

They had perfected the art of verbal sparring during actual sparring matches. "Then after this spar I'm taking you shopping," Sakura promised without skipping a beat, diverting Naruto's punch somewhere beside her head, taking advantage of his unguarded flank to score a hit.

Naruto 'oof'-ed as all air left his lungs. A roundhouse kick had Sakura jumping back, leaving him room to breathe, both physically and metaphorically. "Thank Kami! I've come to hate boxers." He used both hands to push his hair behind his ears with a quick flip, then went at her with a quick series of strikes.

Sakura's guard was good, for she deflected or parried all his hits. "You're wearing boxers?" She slipped sideways to escape his barrage, aiming at his undefended back.

"Well, it's not like I had anything else at home!" Naruto was just as quick, jumping away, turning in mid-air to keep her in sight - but he stumbled halfway through, having misjudged how the weight was shifted in his new body.

"You really need some new underwear!" Sakura was quick to spot his mistake and jumped right at him - airborne as he was, he could do only so much to twist out of her way, and they collided heavily, forearm against forearm and shin against shin, before both jumping backwards.

"Yup," Naruto agreed as a burst of speed brought him into Sakura's range. He deflected her defensive punch with an arm, twisting his torso, and hit her in the stomach with his other elbow, hard enough to make her double over. A Sakura in pain was a dangerous Sakura - and yup, he skipped back right in time to avoid a punch that cracked the earth.

Naruto shook his head, jerking it to swing his hair back where it belonged. "Waa, I hate my hair. It keeps on getting in my face." With a groan, he dropped his stance and slipped off the elastic-band with his hitai-ate, feeling safe in knowing that Sakura wouldn't attack him with his guard down. "You had long hair when we were kids. How could you stand to fight with it?" He used his fingers to comb his long - too long - hair into submission, then slipped the elastic band back on, hoping it would keep his hair in check. As if. "You know, this morning in the mirror I thought it looked pretty cool. Now I just want to cut it with a kunai and be done with it!"

Sakura chuckled, arms crossed over her chest, amused. "Why don't you do it, then?"

Naruto shot an envious look at her _reasonable_ hair - it barely brushed her chin, while Naruto's reached past his shoulder-blades - and shook his head. "Tsunade-baa-chan forbid me from shifting into another henge or to change this one in any way. She said it could mess with her exams and she didn't want to risk it."

Sakura hummed at that, and rummaged in the single pouch tied to the black obi of her red quipao dress, fishing out a black tie. "I have a spare hair-band, if you want."

Naruto perked up at that, and bounced up to her, taking it with gratefulness. "Thank you! You're a saviour!" He collected his hair and clumsily tied it off - and oh!, the wonder, it finally stayed out of his way!

Sakura laughed at his eager smile, then took an aggressive stance. "Ready?"

Naruto grinned, cracking his knuckles. "I was born ready!"

The day had been very pleasant, as far as spring days in Konoha went: sunny, warm, the smell of plants sprouting and flowers blossoming thick in the air, birds coming home to nest after a long winter.

But as evening approached and the sky darkened, the low sun staining the horizon red and orange, Kakashi's nose told him that the pinkish, puffy clouds being shepherded across the sky would bring a heavy downpour in a few hours - likely before midnight.

Kakashi's quiet thoughts about how he _hated_ being rained on were interrupted by Gai's voice, recalling him to the present. Kakashi blinked, averting his eyes from the blue sky to his green-clad friend. "Mh? You said something?," Kakashi drawled, voice thick with indolent laziness. His posture reflected the same feeling, slouched - almost sprawled - on the wooden bench, one elbow on the handrest, palm supporting his chin. For once, it wasn't faked to purposefully grate on people's nerves: it was a good day, and Kakashi honestly felt entitled to laze around.

"I said that I am indeed catching up to you, my hip rival. Eighty-six to eighty-nine!" Gai bragged, raising two fingers in a victory sign. The corner of Kakashi's mouth twitched upward in amusement - not that anyone could see it underneath his mask.

"Maa, are you, now? I do still have the lead, you know," Kakashi said, his tone dry. The sarcasm dripping from every word would have made anyone else bristle in irritation, but Gai knew him better than that, and seemed to take it for what it was meant to be - acknowledgement, in Kakashi's personal, socially-inept way.

The two jōnin were sitting side by side on a bench in the centre of a small square, under a majestic oak tree. Or, more accurately, Kakashi was sitting on said bench, while Gai was sitting in his wheelchair next to him. Above their heads, the oak spread its branches over the whole square, brushing the rooftops of the shops fronting onto the square.

Only a few hours before, Kakashi had been enjoying the afternoon sun reading a book perched on a rooftop in the South District, comfortably nestled between two chimneys - one of his favourite spots. Having spent the previous week on a mission on the border between Fire and fucking _Rain_ , he felt entitled to soak up as much sunlight as he could before he was sent off again. (If he didn't go to sleep with his underwear sopping wet _ever again_ , it would still be too fucking _soon_. Kakashi _hated_ rain.)

Obviously, hiding away in one of his secret spots was not enough to keep Gai off his tail, and the man had somehow found him despite being unable to physically get to the rooftops. Not one to be undone by such trivial things like _being bound to a wheelchair_ , Gai had pelted Kakashi with pebbles (with impressive accuracy, given that Gai couldn't even _see_ him from the road) until the latter had just given up and had come down from his perch to see what he wanted.

Unsurprisingly, Gai had nagged him about their challenge, until Kakashi had - once again - given in. There was no one else with the same ability to wear him out with constant pestering until he would do pretty much anything just to make them stop. Except maybe Naruto.

 _Has anyone ever told you your tenacity can be a bit intimidating?_ , Kakashi had quipped, to which Gai had just laughed and honestly answered: _Yes, every day of my life since first grade at the Academy._

That was how they had ended up in that square - or better, at the bakery that faced the square where Gai had challenged Kakashi to an eating contest. Kakashi hadn't appreciated the subtle jab at his thinness - he wasn't underfed, what he ate was his business and his alone! - but he had still gone along with Gai's dare. They had gotten an equal number of pastries (salty for Kakashi, sweet for Gai) and the eating contest was on.

Gai had won, to absolutely no one's surprise. Two hours later, the two had yet to move from their bench.

No matter how loudly Kakashi complained, he wouldn't change how things were between them for all of Lightning's tea. For all Gai's harassing and Kakashi's apparent irritation, the green-clad jōnin always knew when to press and when not to - when Kakashi was in a truly dark mood, Gai never insisted. Actually, their dramatics were part of the game: Gai would find him, harass him and follow him around until either Kakashi capitulated or lead him on a merry chase - both outcomes were just as fun for everyone involved.

Their dynamic reflected much of them: Gai had always been the one to push forward no matter what, while Kakashi... Kakashi was the one always trying to swim against the tide - and failing. It had been so ever since the Academy - through the years, Kakashi had only learnt to lose with more grace.

Actually, so much was still like the Academy, even now, after twenty-eight years. Except for a few notable people missing, everyone left still bore so much resemblance to their bratty selves.

"You know, I just realized," Kakashi looked back up at the moon, already high in the sky and becoming more and more visible as the sky turned from blue to indigo, "I'm right back where I started, I guess."

Gai made a noncommittal noise beside him, half curious, half expectant. "What do you mean, my esteemed rival?"

Kakashi hummed, his voice even. "I mean, you know... _Before_." _Before_ everything happened. _Before_ so many things Kakashi would be hard pressed to list them all. Before most of his life happened, actually. "No Sharingan, no team... It's as if nothing's changed." He raised a hand to the scar bisecting his left eye, but he tore it away as if his own touch burnt.

A warm hand gripped his shoulder, and Kakashi tore his eyes from the moon to look at his long-term friend, blinking. "You still got me," Gai said, his smile still as strong as ever.

"I had you before."

"Yeah, and you still got me. Nothing's changed."

Kakashi reeled at that, inhaling sharply, his body going rigid for a long, long second. He hadn't expected Gai to agree with him - but then again, Kakashi's genius did not apply on people. Not the people close to him, at least, and certainly not when emotions were concerned. _Feelings_ gave him _hives_. And they ruined his mask as an asshole.

Kakashi sank back against the backrest of the bench, not bothering to shrug off Gai's hand, once more looking up at the ink-stained evening sky. "I guess I do."

Suddenly, Kakashi felt the burning need to be _alone_. Suddenly, even Gai's reassuring presence became grating on his fraying nerves, making him feel guilty in sight of all Gai had done for him.

Gai squeezed his shoulder once more in silent support, then moved his hands to the wheels of his chair, obviously intending to leave. Kakashi felt a pang of... Of _something_ , something between _relief_ and _unease_. Relief because Gai was silently granting him the solitude he suddenly craved, unease because as much relief it brought him, he felt ill that someone could read him so well... Especially when Kakashi couldn't return the favour half the time. In his eyes, it only cemented the opinion that Gai got the short end of the deal in their friendship.

Gai was none the wiser, though. "Now, my esteemed rival, I shall take my leave. I promised my most youthful students I would join them for dinner - they just came back from a B-rank today, you know, and they want to tell me all about it."

While inwardly sighing in relief at the change of subject and mood, outwardly Kakashi rolled his eyes at his friend's boasting - seriously, if the man preened only a bit more, he'd be doing a wheel like a peacock. It was only a B-rank mission, what was there to be smug about? _His_ students had stopped the end of the world. (Kakashi himself may or may not have kind of kick-started it, but that was totally beside the point.)

"I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of Naruto and Sakura telling me about their last success," Kakashi quipped back gleefully, not bothering to stand up as he waved his friend off. Boasting about one's students was a long-standing tradition of jōnin sensei everywhere - and really, one was the Hokage's Assistant, while the other was the Head Medic's Assistant. That beat a puny B-rank mission _so hard_.

Kakashi had expected Gai to suddenly become selectively deaf - as he always did whenever Kakashi lorded his _obvious_ superiority on the matter over him - but instead the green-clad jōnin just burst out laughing, his frame shaking so much he had to stop pushing the wheels.

Kakashi blinked at him, reeling. Was there some joke he had missed? After a few long seconds, Gai got himself under control and waved cheerily at the Hatake, a huge shit-eating grin on his face. Worry crept up Kakashi's spine. "Say hello to Naruto- _kun_ for me, my hip rival!" With an enthusiastic thumbs-up, Gai left, leaving behind a dumbfounded Kakashi.

 _Definitely_ some kind of joke. What had Naruto done this time? Why did he feel like this prank of his would come and bite him in the ass?

Damn, it never bode for Kakashi well when Gai got one on him.

With a sigh, the veteran jōnin pushed himself on his feet, brushing a few wayward crumbles from the pastries off his clothes. As he was off-duty, he had foregone the more militaristic parts of his usual ensemble - such as hitai-ate, steel-backed gloves, jōnin flack vest and weapon pouch (not that he didn't have a few kunai well hidden on his person. A ninja never went unharmed anywhere, _ever_ ) - leaving him with a navy-blue long-sleeved shirt and black trousers, for once free of bindings. And his ever-present mask, of course.

Humming softly, Kakashi headed in the opposite direction Gai had taken. Tucking his hands into his pockets, Kakashi let his feet carry him, roaming aimlessly through the streets of Konoha's Commercial District. His mind kept on going back to the exchange with Gai, regardless of Kakashi's efforts to herd his thoughts elsewhere.

Twenty-eight years had passed since he had graduated from the Academy. _Twenty-eight_. He had been _five_ , little more than a freak trying to tread in the too-big footsteps of his father. They had called him a genius, given him a headband, and asked him to kill for his Village.

Not that he _wasn't_ a genius, because he _was_.

But he also was never given a choice _not_ to be, since his mother's death had left Kakashi alone in Sakumo's care. Oh, his father had loved him alright, but had had no idea how to raise a kid, and in his ignorance he had connected with him the way he did with his genin team - by training him. The joke about ninja babies teething on kunai had been very true in Kakashi's case.

How could Kakashi _not_ be physically fit enough to be admitted into the Academy at four when he had learnt to walk by practicing taijutsu kata, when he had learnt coordination by throwing shuriken, when he had learnt to hold a brush by writing kanji? Heck, for all he knew his first word might have been 'ninja' or 'duty', instead of 'dad'.

And now, after twenty-eight years of service in Konoha's ninja corps, Kakashi's mind and body were paying the price for his genius. He couldn't quite remember what it felt like not to have any part of his body bitching at him - wounds both old and new took perverse pleasure in making sure Kakashi didn't forget about them.

As if on cue, he spotted a little girl running at full tilt towards him, regardless of innocent bystanders. Wishing to avoid a collision, Kakashi sidestepped - and his left side forcibly reminded him he had been stabbed between two ribs only two weeks before. The wound was pretty much healed and the occasional pang of pain wasn't enough to actually distract him while on a mission, but still, it wasn't _nice_.

Around him, people went about their business in twos and threes as night fell. Fellow ninja glanced at him once before looking away - civilians didn't even acknowledge his presence that much, their eyes passing over him as if they couldn't even see him.

Shops owners were closing down their shops, ready to go home to their families, while the establishments providing food, drinks and entertainment catered to the needs of both civilians and off-duty ninja. As the world darkened, Kakashi watched with detached interest as strings of lanterns were lit up and hung on the façade of restaurants and bars, matching the bright light and cheer coming from their windows.

Kakashi shivered, suddenly regretting not taking a jumper or a jacket - spring days might be warm, but spring nights were downright chilly. The evening air was chill and humid, and he could already feel a plethora of old wounds acting up - like his left ankle, shattered by a senbon when he was twenty-seven, or his right knee, broken with a vicious kick when he was seventeen and then again at twenty-eight, or his right shoulder, popped one time too many and with the bad habit of dislocating randomly, or...

Kakashi shook his head, snorting. There he was, going over the long list of his aches like an old man. It wasn't as if he could _do_ much about them, aside from drawing himself a hot bath and having a long soak as soon as he came home.

Thing was, Kakashi was _tired_. He was tired all the time, these days. It wasn't only his body, it was a kind of tiredness that ate at his soul just as much. He felt heavy, _weary_ , sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread. He _was_ growing old, and there was no denying it - at thirty-three, he was officially past him prime. Not in any way _done_ , no - Sharingan-no-longer Kakashi was not going to retire any time soon, but still...

A sneeze caught Kakashi by surprise, almost making him stumble. Sniffling, he rubbed his nose through the mask, only to sneeze once more. And again. And again. Damn cold. With each sneeze, his hair - free of the hitai-ate keeping it back - brushed his eyes, itching. With a grunt, Kakashi brushed his unruly silver bangs back - only for it to fall back right back onto his face. Damn, a haircut was long overdue.

Alright, too much was too much: it was high time to beat a tactical retreat home to a hot bath.

Kakashi looked around Kabuki Street, taking in the many restaurants fronting onto the road he was walking. Did he feel like eating? A warm meal sounded appealing, but he _had_ stuffed his face with pastries only a few hours earlier. After a long moment of council with his stomach, Kakashi decided he wasn't hungry enough.

Happy with his decision, Kakashi turned on his heel to head towards his apartment in the North District - but he halted in mid-motion when his fine hearing caught on a familiar laughter up ahead.

His hearing was second only to his sense of smell, which made Kakashi perfectly able to tell any of his friends' voice apart from the noise of a crowd. If the wind had been in his favour, he would have likely smelled Naruto even before hearing his trademark boisterous laugh.

Logically, Kakashi _knew_ that Konoha was _home_ , and that no harm would befall on his ex-student, but... He had been living with his paranoia long enough to know when he couldn't win. Kakashi could go for a month without seeing one of his precious people without problems, but then something would randomly trigger his bond with that person and he would suddenly feel the desperate need to _see_ them, to make sure they were alright.

There was no reasoning with that irrational worry - if he didn't give in and check in on them, even a quick glance, he would get worked up on his worry until he felt physically sick.

A second, more feminine voice joined Naruto's, and all feeble efforts to fight his paranoia crumbled to ash. Not one, but _both_ of his beloved minions - _students_ , he meant students - weren't far, and he hadn't checked on either of them for quite a while. Naruto and Sakura wouldn't even _see_ him, after all - he would just creep close, make sure that they were alright, assuage his paranoia and walk away, without even needing to talk with them. It would take only a few seconds, then he could go home in peace. Kakashi nodded to himself, satisfied with his plan. Nobody needed to know.

From that distance and with all the white noise of the crowd Kakashi couldn't understand a word of what was being said, but he could tell that they were at ease and that they were up ahead, somewhere on his right, moving in the same direction he had been. If he remembered right, there was a secondary street intersecting Kabuki Road just after the dango shop on his right - and correctly enough, a few seconds later he spotted a blond and a pink head appearing there.

Hiding in the shadows, Kakashi leaned against the building on his left and drew himself up, taking advantage of his taller-than-average height to keep an eye on Sakura and Naruto - who, he noticed, were in the company of a kunoichi with ash-blond hair, likely Yamanaka Ino.

Looking at their backs from that distance, Kakashi could tell that they were enjoying a stroll, their gait bouncy but not hurried, just as he could tell from their clothes that all three were obviously off-duty.

Any other day, that glance from afar would have been enough to placate Kakashi's paranoid worries and he would have left to go home without further inquiry - but not that evening.

That evening, Naruto was wearing a dress, and Kakashi's mind screeched to a halt.

Actually, in kind of a contorted way, it was perfectly logical for Naruto to wear a dress - because the boy _had changed gender and was now a woman_.

The veteran jōnin blinked thrice in rapid succession, glad his mask hid his bewildered expression. But no, it wasn't a trick of the eye: even from behind it was clear Naruto was wearing a _dress_. An orange dress, with tight-fitting, knee-length black trousers underneath it. And when Naruto turned towards Ino as he (she?) talked to the Yamanaka, Kakashi caught a glimpse of a very generous pair of breasts.

What.

Just... _What_.

Kakashi sighed slowly through his nose, feeling a headache coming. What had Naruto gotten into?

Equally curious and worried - it was _Uzumaki Naruto_ they were talking about - Kakashi couldn't just leave it at that. He jumped on the roof of the dango shop and followed the trio from above, hiding in the shadows while drawing all his chakra tightly within himself - while not as good as Kushina had been, Naruto was still a chakra sensor, and Kakashi didn't want his student to spot him.

His shinobi mind looked at the three (two plus one?) kunoichi and recognized three threats. That same cold, logical part of him told him that if he wanted to subdue them, he would have to strike suddenly and silently to kill the stronger one, take advantage of the confusion and just as swiftly take care of the others. The ANBU in him was sure he could defeat two out of three in a head-on battle, but also knew that the third would likely wipe the floor with him if he met him (her?) in an all-out fight. His shinobi mind never took risks if he could avoid them - that was how it had kept Kakashi alive.

Kakashi's human mind, on the other hand, saw three friends walking leisurely down the road, with Sakura and Ino on either side of Naruto, all three carrying bags and looking none the wiser about their stalker (he would have chided them about their awareness... But then again, not many ninja were as paranoid as Kakashi inside Konoha's own walls). They were chatting amicably - from that distance, Kakashi could catch little snippets of conversation, and gathered that Ino was talking about her latest conquest, with Naruto and Sakura either laughing at the poor sod's expense or making sarcastic comments.

Kakashi kept pace with the three from the roofs, memorizing everything - he may not have had a Sharingan anymore, but he knew what to look for and how to analyze details. Under that dress, Naruto was obviously a woman, though he (she?) still bore much resemblance to his (her?) male body - same stature, same muscle mass, very similar features. _Why_ was he (she? Damn, it was getting irritating) a woman, though? And _how_?

In the space of a second, his mind quickly considered and discarded every possible scenario. Was it a more civilized version of his (in)famous sexy no jutsu? Wearing clothes kind of negated the point of it, and there weren't any men to use it on. Plus, he knew Sakura absolutely _hated_ it when Naruto used his (alright, he was going to stick to masculine until proven otherwise) female body for shock value: since she wasn't punching the daylights out of him, there likely wasn't any sexual motive involved.

It was a regular henge, then. Why would Naruto want people to see him looking like a woman? Did he lose a bet with someone - like Inuzuka Kiba? The two were always daring each other to do stupid things. But no, Kakashi quickly abandoned the idea: if it had been the payment of a lost bet, Naruto would have looked ashamed or at least embarrassed at being forced to parade as a woman for everyone to see against his will.

No, he looked perfectly comfortable, his body relaxed - as if he wasn't even aware his body was different. Was it a genjutsu that made him look like a woman to other people but not to him? No, Sakura and Ino wouldn't have stood for that. That meant he _really_ was comfortable in a female body.

…Was it a prank?

Most likely. Naruto's pranks had subsided after he had made genin, but had most certainly _not_ stopped. Kakashi himself had been on the receiving end of his fair share - and got caught in quite a few as well, veteran jōnin or not.

Kakashi didn't even want to try and guess who the prank was for. He really didn't want to know... Unless he himself was the target.

Damn, _now_ he was worried. He couldn't be sure he wouldn't be somehow included. Alright, better break the hold Naruto's henge had on him, then. It was likely a wide-scope genjutsu, one that projected the image of female-Naruto in the mind of everyone around him. It wouldn't be hard to break, especially considering Naruto's skills in genjutsu. Maybe Sakura and Ino had already broken free and to their eyes Naruto was his usual boy self.

Kakashi stopped, closing his eyes as he clasped his hands in a tiger seal, inwardly compelling the chakra flow in his body to freeze. He held it still for a moment, then- "Kai!," he whispered, making his chakra surge and flow as fast as he could without releasing it outside his body. His dark grey eyes snapped open, and looked down at the street to see... To see that Naruto was still a woman.

 _What?_

His genjutsu dissipation was good - in the past it had broken with ease any illusion genjutsu-dumb Naruto had thrown at him.

Kakashi gritted his teeth, resuming his stalking in the shadows. He hadn't known Naruto could do a solid henge! That was something _he_ could do, and few others. Why hadn't he known? _Damn, a Sharingan would be very useful right about now._ For a split second, he missed Obito's eye fiercely.

He could throw a projectile at Naruto to disrupt the solid henge through pain and shock, but Kakashi didn't want to reveal himself just yet - and despite what his paranoid mind was telling him, Naruto wasn't actually doing anything harmful. _Yet_.

Another possibility came at him, and Kakashi's guts froze with unease. He had been operating under the assumption that it was _Naruto_ under that henge, but what if it _wasn't_ him?

He moved as close as he dared to, enhancing his sense of hearing and smell to the best of his abilities - and his best was pretty damn good, for he hadn't been ANBU's best tracker for six years by chance.

Ino seemed to be talking about Shikamaru and Gaara's sister. "Who cares about a kiss? Call me if they grab each other's asses! And I want photographic evidence." Naruto made a noise of assent, but Sakura protested, complaining about her not getting the romanticism of their love story. "That's _real_ love, right there. They're still holding strong despite living so far!"

Ino scoffed, theatrically swishing her long ponytail, and the two entered a heated discussion about the topic, somehow bringing Sasuke's name in as well - Kakashi didn't care about what the two girls talked about, what he needed was to hear _Naruto_ talk. When he did, Naruto's opinion on the subject amused him to no end: "It's not your fault, Sakura-chan, the bastard is as dense as a ton of bricks. The Sharingan scrambled his brain real _bad_."

Abruptly the wind shifted and Kakashi found himself suddenly downwind to the three. _Thank Kami_. If it hadn't changed soon, Kakashi would have been forced to change side of the street and thus risk detection. Senses in overdrive, Kakashi breathed deeply through his nose, nostrils flaring - sight and hearing were all nice and good, but he was a dog at heart, and scents never lied.

Kakashi isolated Naruto's scent from the thousand smells in the air and - well, damn. He had kind of expected it, but the blond Uzumaki _really_ was a woman. While still smelling like Naruto - sunshine and grass and dust and wool - the scent of the person in the orange dress lacked the pungent whiff of musk and instead had a spicy-sweet, watery component to it. A solid henge physically altered the body, scent glands included, and it was the only reason one's scent could change like that.

Well, between Naruto's distinctive speech patterns and his smell, Kakashi had no choice but to conclude that his ex-student really had sprouted breasts and wider hips. Not that the alternatives had been plausible - Sakura knew Naruto like a brother and was very smart, she would have been able to tell an impostor from the real one in a blink.

"Dinner time, girls!" was the only warning Kakashi got before the three vanished inside a BBQ restaurant, leaving him to stare at the brightly lit establishment. Now what?

Well, he couldn't leave it at that. For his sanity's sake, he needed to know what was going on - anyone who had survived Naruto's more elaborate pranks would agree with him (or run for the hills). The shinobi in him knew he needed info in order to elaborate a counter plan, so info gathering it was. And what better source than Naruto himself? The boy was chronically incapable of keeping secrets, and Kakashi planned to take advantage of that.

Crouched on the edge of the roof, he gave the ladies (kind of?) a few minutes to settle in, not wanting to look like he was stalking them. When he deemed it polite, he jumped down and strode confidently into the restaurant.

Kakashi spotted the three from the corner of his eye immediately, sitting around a low table in a corner booth. He made a show of checking out the décor, pretending not to notice the three as he looked around: the restaurant was bright and cheerful, with floors of pale wood and colourful rice paper panels separating the booths, each with a wide window looking over a carefully-tended backyard.

He shouldn't have bothered with his charade, for the three spotted him just as fast and called for him right away.

"Kakashi-sensei!," called out Sakura, just as Naruto called out "Kakashi-san!", both waving at him.

Kakashi blinked at Naruto's change of honorific. He noticed Sakura shooting the blonde a look, but she didn't say anything. Huh. Still, the veteran jōnin chose to take his students' enthusiastic welcome as an open invitation, and approached them.

"Yo," he greeted with his best plastic smile - which melted into a real smile when the two eyerolled and huffed at his one-word greeting. Kakashi resented their opinion about it not being a socially acceptable way to say hello to people. Still, it was interesting to see how female-Naruto's facial expressions were perfectly identical to male-Naruto's - though his now softer features made his pout look pretty cute.

"Look who's there," Ino drawled, chin on her entwined hands, looking right at him in the eye. "Were you stalking us, Kakashi-san?" Her voice and her pose were coquettish - however, her blue eyes were anything but. Sakura and Naruto looked amused by the idea, but Kakashi could see that the blonde girl was serious - but she also didn't seem intentioned to actually call him out on it, hiding her accusation in a joke. A worthy daughter to Yamanaka Inoichi indeed.

"Maa, of course not! I just wanted to check on my students," he said in a sweet voice. Sakura and Ino exchanged a glance, then in unison they looked pointedly at Naruto, who huffed a laugh and shrugged.

"Yeah, I know, I know." Naruto waved a hand at them, rubbing the back of his nape with the other as he always did when feeling awkward - and would you look at that, female-Naruto had long hair. Weird.

"Hey, wanna join us?" Aaaand there was the blond Uzumaki doing what he always did when he felt uneasy: be loud, act without thinking and change the subject in such an unsubtle way it made Kakashi's head hurt. Sakura and Ino shot Naruto annoyed glances - they likely had planned to grill him about his change with the bribery of food, and now they couldn't kick Kakashi out without being rude.

Kakashi grinned under his mask. Well, that had been easy. "Well, if you insist, Naruto-kun..."

Before the girls could come up with a way to get rid of him, he slipped to sit at the low table beside Ino, right in front of Naruto. Sakura rolled her eyes, but said nothing. Ino shook her head. Naruto looked downright uncomfortable, looking everywhere but at his ex-teacher. He looked like someone regretting not having a filter between his brain and his tongue.

Mercifully, a waiter appeared right then with a tray of many kinds of meat. The four divided it between them with little fuss - except from a brief battle between Naruto and Sakura for the last set of spare ribs, which the blond lost - and started making good use of the coal grill built in at the centre of the table.

As his meat cooked, Kakashi tilted his head and finally asked the question burning away at his sanity: "So, Naruto-kun, why the change?"

Naruto, who had been drinking, startled and half-choked on his water. Seriously, how could he be surprised at Kakashi's question? Had he _really_ hoped he would not ask? Foolish boy. He was lucky he was cute.

"I... I, well... Uh, I felt like it...?" Came the feeble answer. Kakashi raised an eyebrow at the terrible lie.

…How did Naruto make jōnin, again?

As his student floundered for words - Sakura and Ino listening in, very interested and very amused - Kakashi took his time to really look at the boy's new form.

He was a very tall woman, almost as tall as Kakashi himself and good head over Sakura's. Given the average height of kunoichi, he would stand out like a sore thumb among the kunoichi ranks.

Kakashi could see that Naruto had kept his henge as physically close to his male body as possible, and applauded his choice. He knew from experience that it was a pain to get used to a completely new body, whence keeping one's height and muscle mass made it easier to fight.

That said, he wasn't ugly or overly masculine either - quite the contrary, in fact. While tall, female-Naruto was perfectly proportioned, and Kakashi could see where the boy got his inspiration from. Although two cups smaller, such a generous bust could only come from seeing the Hokage's own impressive cleavage; those wide hips held all the curves of Ino's body, and while still feminine-looking, those strong shoulders and lithe arms rippling with taut muscles matched Sakura's own ones trait for trait. And those were definitely Kurenai's legs he saw folded under the blond's body, because Kakashi was pretty sure no one else in Konoha had such shapely thighs.

Naruto's features were softer, but still easily recognizable. His jaw was just a bit slimmer, his face narrower and tad more oval, his cheek-bones higher, but his eyes and whisker marks were the same. One would think that as a woman Naruto would look more like his mother, but no: he looked more like Minato-sensei as a woman than he did as a man, helped by the two long bangs framing his face, escaping the low ponytail he kept his now-long hair in.

It was both endearing and disturbing, seeing Minato's face on female-Naruto. Naruto who now looked, for all intents and purpose, like a beautiful kunoichi in top fighting form.

(Having grown up amongst ninja, Kakashi couldn't see how civilian men found delicate, thin, _weak_ women beautiful. The only theory he had for such a lack of taste was that civilian men nursed their wounded egos by favouring weak ladies with little meat on their bones to justify their own meagre strength and virility. That didn't change the fact that ninjas would wipe the floor with them in a fight, though.)

"So, uh, I was talking with baa-chan, and, uh, the discussion sort of fell on the topic of henge? So I told her I could do a solid henge and she didn't believe me so I showed her and, well, she was impressed, you see?"

…Wow, it had been a _long_ time since Kakashi had heard Naruto sound so awkward. He had forgotten how hard the boy could blush - as a girl, it looked even more pronounced.

Naruto kept on rambling: "She didn't know I could hold it indefinitely, and- And, uh, she was really surprised when I told her! I held this female form for a month years ago when I was away with Ero-sennin and it proved I really _became_ a girl and, well, nobody else can hold a solid henge as long as me because, you know, chakra powerhouse, so she didn't know it could change inner biology but I told her it _really_ makes me a girl and she was very interested so she wanted me to, eh experiment with it again-" In his babbling, the blond flailed his arms so wildly he almost decked Sakura in the face, prompting the medic to deck _him_.

Outwardly, Kakashi looked mildly interested as he half-listened to Naruto's ramblings, busy with turning his meat on the grill.

Inwardly, Kakashi was howling with laughter. Oh Kami, this was too _precious_.

He held out a hand. "Naruto-kun, _breathe_." The boy-turned-girl froze halfway through a word, swallowed and obeyed, breathing in and out deeply. Kakashi wasn't sure if it actually helped Naruto, but at least it halted the onslaught on his ears. "So, you're doing this under order of the Hokage?"

Naruto looked pained at that. Why? "No, I mean, she didn't ask me, I offered and uh, yeah, kind of? And, and she's having me do these tests at the hospital, you see? Uh..."

Then it clicked. _'It really makes me a girl'_ and _'change inner biology',_ his ex-student had said. Kakashi was familiar with solid henge and how it behaved more like ninjutsu than a genjutsu, physically changing the body. Naruto said he had once kept it for a _month_ (and wasn't that a whole new level of crazy? _Kakashi_ could maintain it for no longer than a few hours before falling dead from chakra exhaustion!) so the blonde was basically telling him that Tsunade was studying his _female reproductive cycle?_

Okay, _that_ won the prize for sheer craziness. Naruto really was Konoha's Number One Most Unpredictable Ninja - Kakashi made a mental note to give him a plaque to hang on his door for his birthday. Someone needed to make it official.

The veteran jōnin hummed in thought, wrapping his mind around the matter as he ate. As usual, he cast a simple genjutsu that made it look like his mask was still in place, when actually it was pooled around his neck (even _he_ couldn't eat through fabric, no matter what people thought).

Naruto looked at him with barely-concealed worry. Why was his ex-student so concerned? Kakashi was aware his ex-student thought highly of him and valued his opinion very much, but that was true of his friends as well. Was he worried Kakashi would think less of him now that he had the body of a woman? That wasn't true, obviously - Naruto was still Naruto - but it was interesting that the blond Uzumaki didn't seem to hold the same worry about Sakura and Ino. Why? What did make Kakashi special? The boy-turned-girl was so lost in his worries he seemed to have forgotten his meat on the grill.

Kakashi pointed at the burnt-looking piece of beef with his chopsticks. "Naruto-kun, your meat is burning." That seemed to shake Naruto from whatever state of mind he had been caught in, and rushed to save his dinner with a dismayed cry.

"Thank you Kakashi-san!," he cried in relief, dipping the meat in the saucer with great vigour and sending drops of soy sauce everywhere before digging in with gusto. Aaaand there went Kakashi's hope Naruto would magically learn some manners along with acquiring breasts.

Talking about that... "Maa, Naruto-kun, why so rude? Am I not your beloved sensei anymore, now that you're a pretty girl?" Under his mask of laziness and uncaring-ness, Kakashi wasn't a completely sadistic bastard, and could see his student needed a change of subject for a reprieve from whatever worried him. That Kakashi got to make fun of Naruto was only a bonus. Plus, he was honestly curious.

Predictably, Naruto scowled, then covered it with a foxy smile. "Technically, you're not my sensei anymore!"

"Then why does Sakura-chan still call me that? All the other teams also still call their ex-teachers 'sensei' as well." Kakashi looked pointedly at Sakura and Ino in a silent question, who confirmed it. Sakura was looking at Naruto with great interest, and Kakashi remembered her reaction at Naruto's lack of honorific: she didn't know the reason for the change either, and was just as curious.

"That's just habit, like a nickname." Naruto chomped on a piece of pork as if it proved his point. Maybe in his head it did? Weird boy.

"I like 'Kakashi-sensei', though." Kakashi made his tone plaintive, almost a whine. Naruto gave him an unimpressed look. "Alright, then what about 'Kakashi-senpai'?"

Naruto eyerolled _hard_ , his eyebrows rising high on his forehead. "I'm not a lovesick puppy like Yamato-sensei, I'm not calling you _that_."

" _Why_ is he 'sensei' when I'm not?" He ignored the 'lovesick puppy' comment because _nope._

"He taught me longer than you did - and more." Kakashi pouted, now honestly offended. Naruto was _his_ student, not Tenzō's! Tenzō had just happened to teach him something. Sometime. "Also, it makes him real happy to have someone look up to him. Makes wonders for his self-confidence. While you _really_ don't need an ego boost."

Kakashi smiled minutely under his mask. That was Naruto alright: bright and boisterous and oblivious right until he showed how much he understood people.

The veteran jōnin wouldn't concede defeat so quickly, though, and readied a dry jibe that would make Naruto squirm. He never said it, however. Naruto's blue eyes held Kakashi's grey ones with a familiar intensity the ex-sensei recognized: the blonde was really invested in the 'sensei' business, and was sporting that particular look of stubbornness that meant he wasn't going to back down anytime soon. It was a look that had brought down better ninja than Kakashi.

For whatever reasons, Naruto seemed to have good reasons not to want to call him 'sensei' anymore. Who was Kakashi top hope to make him change his mind?

"...'Kakashi-san' is good, I guess," the veteran jōnin conceded eventually. After all, Naruto had earned the right to speak to him like an equal, after all. A small part of him felt sad, though. Was it a sign his ex-student wanted to free himself from Kakashi's influence? If that was what Naruto wanted, it was his choice, but... He didn't have to like it.

In front of him, Naruto blinked, as if he hadn't expected the older man to give in so easily. He quickly recovered, though, and favoured him with a big smile, looking relieved. Well, now the boy seemed relaxed enough to answer his questions without tripping over his own tongue, so Kakashi could go back to interrogating him. "How long?"

"How long what?," Naruto asked, munching loudly on his food, an oblivious expression on his face. Was he playing hard to get or was he honestly dumb? Kakashi could never quite pinpoint him.

"How long are you planning to stay female?"

Naruto's smile slid off for just a fraction of a second. It was immediately back, just as bright, but it had been enough to confirm Kakashi's suspicions: the blond Uzumaki was hiding something.

Kakashi didn't like surprises, especially when they could come back to bite his ass. Call it a hunch, but the veteran jōnin felt that this one most certainly would.

Still smiling, Naruto locked eyes with Kakashi, and his glare was defiant. "A few months, I think. Until baa-chan lets me off." Kakashi was very good at detecting lies, and he knew Naruto was lying - at the very least by omission. What was really interesting, was that Naruto's eyes told him that Naruto _knew_ Kakashi knew he was lying, and that he was still not going to talk.

"A few months, uh," he repeated. While nothing Naruto had said felt like an outright lie, he obviously had his own agenda for switching gender. Kakashi took it for granted it was nothing malicious or that would harm Konoha, but that meant that Naruto was either going to pull a huge prank or that he was entirely in good faith. Kakashi didn't know which option was scarier: on one hand, Naruto was Kushina's son and his pranks had reduced grown-up ANBU to tears of frustration, on the other hand, the road to downfall was paved with good intentions. Naruto was a good boy, but Kakashi feared he didn't always have the foresight to predict what his good intentions would bring him on the long run.

Feeling the tense undertones their discussion had taken, Ino neatly cut in. "That's why we took her shopping today! We couldn't let her wear men clothes for months." She grinned, pointing at the many bags piled against the wall behind her, obviously full of clothes.

Sakura glanced at Naruto's orange dress with a satisfied grin. "We didn't get her to lose the orange, but we _did_ make a step towards a better sense of fashion."

Indeed, Kakashi had noticed that Naruto's quipao dress was of very nice quality - of a darker shade of orange than he usually wore, with black trimming and black koi fish embroidery. But he had also noticed how Naruto cringed minutely at each 'her' - he hid it well, but Kakashi's trained eye saw how Naruto gritted his teeth as he ate, how his grip on his chopsticks tightened. Not a 'she', then - his early assumption had been right.

Why didn't Naruto correct them if he so obviously didn't agree with the pronoun? Well, Kakashi wouldn't stand for that. He wouldn't even have to step out of character to set things right: everyone knew he was nosy, so no one would fault him for butting in on matters that really weren't his own.

"Well, Naruto- _kun..._ " the strong emphasis on the 'kun' caught everybody's attention. "Sai-kun would say you're no less a man because of a dress. He'll probably be amused you happen to be true to the nickname he gave you." Kakashi looked at the two girls, tilting his head to look sideways at Naruto. His voice was light, but his dark grey eyes were serious as locked onto the two kunoichi. "I do think _he_ is pretty cute with that dress, though. It suits _him_. Good job, girls."

From the way Naruto tentatively smiled at him, Kakashi had nailed it right away. Sakura and Ino didn't miss the stress he put in the masculine pronouns: they looked at each other, then at Naruto - and finally it dawned on them, judging by their uneasy, almost guilty expressions. Good.

Naruto didn't miss the exchange, and his smile widened. He covered Sakura's hand with his own, squeezing it lightly, beaming at his teammate. _It's alright,_ his blue eyes said _._ Sakura frowned, looking down at their linked hands and then up again at him. _I'm sorry,_ her green eyes said _._ Naruto shook his head minutely. _Don't be. It's alright._ Sakura nodded with a tiny smile, and squeezed Naruto's hand in return. Ino leaned over the table to do the same, joining her hand with Naruto's and Sakura's.

Kakashi, momentarily forgotten, was inwardly very pleased with himself. He had taken a wild guess, but it looked like Naruto wasn't sure if he _could_ still be a man while having a female body. Had Naruto refrained from correcting the girls' mistake under the wrong assumption that he would have to get used to be called a 'she'? Or did he simply not know how to say it? Was he on some level embarrassed with his new body? Well, it was solved now. If he knew Sakura and Ino well, they would make sure that Konoha as a whole knew how to refer to Naruto by tomorrow.

As the girls took up a discussion about the clothes they had made Naruto buy, the boy-turned-girl shot Kakashi a blinding smile, his clear eyes full of relief and gratefulness. _Thank you._

Kakashi nodded, silently acknowledging him as he set another piece of meat on the grill. Maybe he was not his sensei anymore, but Naruto would never stop being his student.


End file.
